


The haunting of Vibe

by Katie237



Category: The Flash (TV 2014)
Genre: AU, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Episode: s05e03 The Death of Vibe, Haunting, Hearing Voices, Hurt/Comfort, Visions, Whump
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-22
Updated: 2019-08-09
Packaged: 2019-11-28 03:26:58
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 13
Words: 37,944
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18202880
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Katie237/pseuds/Katie237
Summary: AU of 5x03 The Death of Vibe: it's over, Cicada killed Cisco and injured Barry, leaving him powerless and devastated. But, when the speedster starts getting visions and hearing his deceased friend, Barry is left wondering if he's losing his mind or if he's really being haunted by Vibe. To make things worse, a mysterious shadow starts attacking Team Flash for unknown reasons.





	1. Gone

**Author's Note:**

> Hello everyone! Letting you know that I'm trying a little return to writing while testing this new story's idea. It's going to be a different type of story based off an idea I had when I first watched the Death of Vibe episode last fall. Just keep an open mind.
> 
> I'll let you guys decide if you're interested before posting another story you don't like, so don't be shy :)

Cisco is dead.

Cisco just died.

Cisco was gone.

He was gone forever, and he wasn't coming

These were the only thoughts running through Barry's distressed mind that was threatening to break following the events that just unfolded in front of his eyes, leaving him huffing and puffing. This time, his physical condition wasn't caused by the beating he just received from Cicada, yet again, but because of the overwhelming emotions. It just couldn't be happening. As Barry was lost in his psychological torment, the speedster's brain wasn't even registering at the moment the pain from his bruised cheeks and from his broken and bleeding lips.

"Cisco..." he whispered to his dead friend, an action that took all of his strength considering the indescribable weight pushing down on his chest and making it so difficult to breathe.

The grasp of horror and defeat that was clutching and crushing his heart was familiar; he felt the same way when Ralph got allegedly killed before his eyes by Devoe last year. But, for some reason, it wasn't the same. It could be because it was Cisco this time. Or, was it? Perhaps it was just denial as his mind was desperately hanging to the hope that Cisco was about to breach at any moment now, alive and well.

A white-hot pain suddenly erupted in the middle of his back and radiated almost instantly in his whole body, causing the speedster' knees to buckle underneath him and sent him kneeling on the forest ground, accompanied by an agonizing scream. Thanks to the anguish that was engulfing his mind and body, white spots soon appeared and clouded his vision. It was mere seconds later, or maybe less, that all strength left his beaten body which allowed the gravity to take control of it and attract the rest of his limbs toward the ground.

''FLASH!''

Voices shouted his name at the top of their lung. They were very familiar voices, but ones Barry couldn't identify as he was slowly falling into the grasp of darkness. The pain was too much; he couldn't hold on. So, the CSI allowed the embrace of unconsciousness to take him over.

"Cisco," he whispered again just before his mind went completely black.

The speedster's mind drifted all over like a bird flying over the infinity of nothingness as he was trying to find his way back to the world of the living.

''You're gonna be okay,'' whispered a voice. Cisco's voice this time. Barry was sure of that.

So, Cisco was alive, right? He sounded so worried, just as anxious and worry as the CSI had been for his best friend's fate moments earlier.

''Fight this, dad,'' added Nora's voice.

''Stay with us, it's gonna be okay,'' added Cisco, once more.

More words got spoken, but none that was making any sense to Barry who was slowly growing farther and farther away in every way. It was so hard, almost impossible, to hold on, despite Flash's strong will to know if they were ok. He so desperately needed to know if Nora and Cisco were going to stay that way. What if the thing, or the person, who attacked him was about to finish the job by killing his best friend and his daughter? But, despite Barry's best intentions, the speedster's mind slipped again.

Slowly, the bliss that had been enveloping Flash started to dissipate and sound, words, around him became clearer and stronger.

"I think he's waking up… Caitlin, come back!" Urgently called out a female's voice, followed by hurried heels clicking on the ground.

"'Everything's going to be okay," added another, unknown, person.

A groan was the only sound Barry managed to let out to express his awareness of his surroundings. Well, awareness was a big word for the moment, but at least Barry could hear voices and understand words, mostly, so that was a great start. Why were his eyelids so damn heavy anyway? Why was his back hurting so much? At least, with every new passing second, the ringing in his ear was subsiding a bit more 'till the point Barry was confident he could concentrate on something without getting nauseous. His hearing got better just in time to pick up the sound of a person approaching his bed because he was definitely laying down in one, just before that person spoke up:

"Barry? Can you hear me?"

Caitlin.

"Cait?" Barry rasped, struggling and badly falling at opening his eyes, but still moving his head in the direction of the voice, "wh- 'appened?"

"Cicada stabbed you in the back; you were out for more than a day," gently explained the other voice that was finally clear enough to be recognized; Nora. Hearing her was enough to cause Barry to sigh in relief; she was okay. The speedster didn't dream about her calling out for him in the woods.

If she was okay, so was Cisco. He had to be. But, wait. How did he get stabbed? Cicada left right after seemingly killing Vibe.

"How?" He weakly asked.

"Cicada came back to finish the job, while you had your guard down. You had us worried," explained Nora who joined Caitlin right next to the bed and gently put her hand on her father's shoulder.

Slowly, but surely, Barry managed to half-open his eyelids and blinked a few times to clear his vision. Finally able to clearly see his surroundings and the white ceiling of the medbay, Barry started to take a good look around and search for the one person occupying his thoughts.

"Cisco?" He asked, after looking twice around the whole room and not finding the friend he was looking for. "Where is he? Where did he go?"

The complete silence that fell in the room, followed by a quiet sob, forced Barry to observe more closely the two people standing next to the bed. Once that was done, the CSI took notice of the pale faces and red puffy eyes that were staring right back at him. That latter part was especially true for Caitlin who also had dry tear marks visible on her skin.

The sight of his friend and daughter' expression twisted Barry's stomach and sent a wave of nausea up his throat. No. It couldn't be. Maybe, hopefully, things just got close, and they had all been anxious about both the engineer and the speedster. It had to be the reason behind their exhausted features. It had to.

"Cisco?" He asked again, feeling his mouth going parched.

"It's all my fault," said Nora after a second of tensed silence. "I'm… it's wasn't supposed to happen. I'm so sorry," she badly apologized.

"I do... don.. I don't get it," stuttered Barry. He knew. Deep down, he knew. There was only one logical explanation, but it was one he couldn't face. It was one truth that was threatening to shatter his world.

"He's gone, Barry. Cisco's gone," finally let out the doctor whose glance drifted away to avoid painful eye contact.

To be honest, it wouldn't have mattered since, at this very instant, the speedster lost all connections between his brain and his surroundings. He was blankly looking at the wall while his mind sent an agonizing sensation all over his body. No. Not Cisco. Barry was right when he said that losing his best friend and being his fault would be the end of his world. It was like the earth had opened under his feet, and he was falling fast with no perspective of reaching the bottom.

Denial suddenly rushed over like a runaway train and washed over his mind as Barry gulped down his saliva and spoke up, "no... there was someone else with the room, with us, I heard a voice."

Frowned and confused faces blankly looked back at him.

"When?"

"Dad, it's only the three of us. Everyone else is upstairs."

Barry shook his head vigorously, a gesture he quickly regretted when the walls and ceiling started spinning around and forced him to take a moment to stop, close his eyes, and take a shaky breath. That was at this moment he took notice that something else went wrong earlier. Well, yesterday. It seems like the dark matter that messed up with Cisco's power was playing tricks with his abilities.

"Take it easy," gently instructed Caitlin's tired voice like she'd been reading his mind, "because of Cicada's dagger, your powers are not going to work for a few days at least."

Of course, they weren't.

But that wasn't the most crucial issue at this very instant.

"When I woke up and right after Nora went to get you," explained Barry before taking two deep breaths to chase away nausea. "I heard someone talking to me."

The second his sentence was done, Barry opened his eyes again and looked straight at his daughter for confirmation, only to see her sight sadly.

"I was alone with you when you woke up," she assured, "you dreamt it, I'm sorry."

"But ther-"

"Dad, there wasn't anything left of-"

The young speedster closed her eyes for a second and deeply inhaled, unable to finish her sentence. Grabbing a hold on herself, she continued, "Cisco's gone. I tried to create a distraction with the explosion, hoping I could drag him through a breach with me, but it didn't work. With the dagger dampening my speed, I barely got out of there alive myself. There wasn't enough time to save both of us."

Tears rose up exponentially fast and quickly filled Barry's eyes. His best friend was gone? Raising his right arm, and wincing at the sudden pain from his too sore body, he wiped them off and swallowed his saliva to clear his throat.

"I heard him, in the woods, I know it. It was him, it-"

Barry stopped himself before the crowd pressing against his bed could do it for him. They were right; he saw it for himself before Cicada came back to finish the job and stabbed him in the back, literally. There was nothing left of his best friend, just a few pieces of his shredded uniform. That was it. As he was sniffing, the speedster turned his head in the opposite direction, blocking himself from the two women.

"I tried to save him, dad. I'm so sorry I failed," said Nora, sniffing away her rising tears.

"Do you need a-"

"Leave me alone," requested the speedster, interrupting the doctor whose voice was about to break from the pain. He shuddered and shrugged off in one movement the comforting hand that went to his shoulder.

"Mom wanted to see you once you'll be awake; should I go get her?" Gently asked XS, retreating her hand and awkwardly putting it back into her jeans pocket.

"Not now... just, please leave me alone," requested the man again, a tad more strongly than the first time.

Sighing, Caitlin nudged Nora to stop her from trying to make contact again and pointed the door with her head. He needed some time to register all the pieces of information.

"Alright, we'll give you some space. I'll be in the cortex if you need anything."

Barry grunted as an answer. Maybe it was his back injury, or perhaps it was his mental agony, but either way, he was suddenly feeling exhausted and had no strength left in him to answer. The suffering in his back wasn't helping either; he just wanted to slip away from all of this.

How was he supposed to move on from this? The leaving footsteps barely registered as all he could hear was his pulse beating hard in his ears. He could've, he should've, saved his best friend.

"I'm so sorry, Cisco," he whimpered before slipping into an uneasy sleep.

Everything around him started to drift and change, allowing his surroundings to shift into a forest plunged into the darkness. The clouds were keeping most of the moon's ray from reaching the forest ground, and the three branches were dancing under the gentle breeze. It was almost beautiful for a second, 'till Barry finally realized where he was. It wasn't just any forest; it was the one where they fought Cicada and where Cisco…

Speaking of, in the distance and down the hill from where the speedster was, Barry spotted an unmistakable figure. There was no doubt about it; that person who was looking down at a newly formed crater was no other than himself. Everything suddenly clicked inside Barry's mind; not only it was the place where everything unfolded, but he was also reliving it from an outside view perspective. His past-self was still looking down at the remains of his departed friend when a bright blue breach formed in the back, only to close in the next instant without allowing anything or anyone in or out of it.

The only effect this unexplained portal had was to create a nice contrast of light with the quickly arriving purple and yellow lightning, announcing the return of Nora West-Allen. All of this stayed unseen by the grieving speedster who was still lost in his thoughts, desperately staring at the shredded pieces of the Vibe uniform on the ground until everything changed in a flash.

Before anyone could say or do a thing, Cicada reappeared just as fast as he went away and landed right behind the distracted hero.

"FLASH! Watch out!" Desperately shouted XS at the sudden sight of Cicada rising his dagger behind the Flash.

In the blink of an eye, it was all over. It was too late. Every action unfolded in slow motion in front of the confused Barry who was observing the scene, frame by frame, from a third person perspective. His past-self screamed in agony and fell to his knees. Nora started running the faster she could, without her powers. Cicada took his dagger out while simultaneously kicking the wounded hero down on the ground. Nora reached out to the two of them. Cicada looked at the reckless woman and took off again, just like that. One action at the time.

"Fight this, dad!" Desperately said the young Flash's daughter.

Why was Barry dreaming of this? Why was he seeing everything again, and from that perspective? Or, had he somehow time travel back to that moment?

"Barry-" weakly whispered a too familiar voice that was coming from way closer than the spot where the action was happening.

Barry jostled and turned on himself. Cisco. It was him. Except, the man was nowhere to be seen as his voice was whistling his friend's name and echoing all around the speedster like the wind.

"Cisco? Where are you, man?"

"Don't give up on me, man," whispered Cisco again, way quieter than the first time.

"Where are you? Let me help you!" Called out Barry.

Except, the voice that answered, after a few moments of silence, wasn't Cisco's. It was Iris's.

"Barry? Barry, wake up. Barry!"

It was gasping and seating up in one sharp, and painful, movement that Barry opened his eyes and found himself back in S.T.A.R. Labs medical bay with his wife worriedly looking at him, which shouldn't a surprise considering all the sweat that was running down his back and forehead. So, it was all a dream, again, and Cisco was gone.

"Are you alright?" Gently asked Iris, grabbing his hands between her owns.

"I... I don't know," truthfully answered back the man, looking down and taking a few deep breaths. Was he ever going to get better?


	2. Pain

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Woah, thanks a LOT guys for your comments, didn't think you would appreciate that new story like that. You're amazing! Hope you'll enjoy this one just as well.

"I should've saved Cisco; I should've been faster and take down Cicada straight away. I should've-" Barry started to ramble.

Freeing his hands out of his wife's grasp, he landed his forehead between his palms and leaned forward despite his body protesting against taking this action.

The pain from his wound was far more endurable than it had been yesterday, but it was still aching enough to make him hiss at the movement and at the new position he found himself in. But, no matter how uncomfortable he was feeling right now, Barry didn't budge and stayed mostly still, shaking slightly from the adrenaline brought up by his agitated dream. Switching strategy, Iris went to rub his back soothingly.

"You did everything you could under the circumstances; you cannot blame yourself. What's done is done. You cannot change the past."

The CSI's head popped up just a tad as he got struck by a sudden thought, an obvious one that also appeared instantly into his wife's mind.

"You know what I meant; you can't do this," hurriedly added Iris, "you can't mess with the timeline. You said it yourself; you're not a god. You cannot risk everything for that, even if it's Cisco we're talking about. It's not what he would've wanted," she gently said with his smoothest voice.

"It's not right," whispered Barry, hissing again in pain when his wife rubbed a tad too vigorously at the wrong spot.

Empathizing with all her heart and wincing in sympathy, the reporter glanced behind her husband to look at where her left hand was.

"How's your back?" She asked, looking where the injury was, hidden under the thin grey t-shirt.

Taking a shaky breath, and with the help of his wife, Barry straightened himself and allowed his body to slump against the pile of pillow his wife made while he was changing position. After a few seconds, seconds that Barry used to analyse his situation, the CSI finally answered truthfully, with a half-forced smile. "It's getting better."

"That's good to hear," said Iris, smiling and letting go of the physical contact. "Now, what about some food? I could go grab you a sandwich or anything else that you want," she offered.

Food? The simple idea of it had Barry's departed nausea threatening to come back, "no, I'm not hungry. Maybe later."

"Barry, you haven't eaten anything in days... I'm worried about you."

Tenderly, Barry extended his right hand to touch Iris' chin and he brought it in the right angle to make eye contact, "I know you are and I love you for that. But, I'm truly not hungry, just a bit tired. I'll be okay, eventually."

Iris sighed and moved away from the contact on her chin before yielding way faster than her husband anticipated it, "I'll give you a pass for now, but you have to eat. You can't let yourself perish; it's not wh-"

It's not what Cisco would've wanted? Yeah, the speedster heard that one before. If only people could stop bringing him up, that could help. How are you supposed to know what a deceased person wants anyway? Barry's features suddenly tensed up, victim to an unexpected and intense wave of pain in his back. His eyes squinted, and his fingernails started digging into the mattress underneath him with enough force to turn his knuckles white.

"Barry?" Worriedly asked Iris, "what's going on?"

He wanted to answer, he really did, but when his mouth opened up, the only sound that managed to escape was a gasp of pain. The building tension caused his whole body to convulse uncontrollably to the point his right hand started to vibrate slightly, almost dematerializing, like if the limb was trying to, literally, shake off the agony washing his entire being.

"BARRY!"

Gasping like a drowning man reaching the surface, the speedster abruptly reconnected with his surroundings, only to realize Iris was up from the chair. The reporter was forcibly grabbing and shaking his shoulders with worry all over her beautiful eyes. On the bright side, it looked like his powers weren't completely gone, right? Even after Barry managed to gain back enough control of his body to make eye contact, finally, it barely diminished the anguish displaying all over the reporter's face.

"What's going on? Are you okay?"

"My back," he gasped between two hard breaths.

Seeing her husband finally settling down and talking, Iris relaxed slightly and let go of the contact before sitting back in her seat. As both young people were allowing themselves to unwind from the unexplained trouble, none of them noticed the faceless, human-shaped, shadow hovering over the ground right at the cortex entrance. The strange apparition was just floating there and staring straight at the two figures in the medical bay. That was if starring was the right word considering how the character didn't have a face.

After seemingly long consideration, the ominous looking shadow backed away and dissipated into the wall, unseen and unheard.

"Just take it easy, you're gonna be okay," gently reassured Iris to her relaxing husband who kept on breathing in and out for what felt like forever, completely unaware of the danger.

*****FLASHFLASHFLASH*****

"Cisco!" Shouted Barry as he abruptly woke up and opened his eyes.

Prompting himself on his elbows, the speedsters' eyes darted all around, disoriented and heavy breathing as the sweat was freely running down his forehead and sticking his arms on the couch he was on.

He was in the S.T.A.R. Labs' lounge in the upper level, the same place he took a habit to come and nap as often as he could during the day to try and balance his sleepless nights. His glance moved to the clock sitting on the counter; 4:15 pm. He slept almost three hours straight; that had to be a record, but it still wasn't enough. Tiredly, Barry rubbed his eyes with the back of his hand. If only he could stop making these dreams, these nightmares, where he would almost always revisit the moment of his best friend's death. And, the other times, when he wasn't reliving that moment, the hero would often find himself in a total lifeless black void. In all these cases, there was one constant; Cisco was calling him out like he was asking for help.

If Barry was to be completely honest with himself, he had to admit that the fact he was having these disturbing dreams wasn't surprising to the speedster. His guilt was eating him alive, even when he wasn't in Morpheus' arms. How could he not feel responsible for what happened? Cisco's death was on him. It was his fault that Vibe was gone and the fact was undeniable.

Yawning loudly, Barry extended his arms over his head first, and then behind it, stretching them till his joints cracked. Doing so, he winced at the tension his movement caused to his still-healing injury. It was still painful, but nothing like what it had been the first few days or during that one unexplained moment when he was with Iris. It had been almost a full week since that night in the forest, and his powers were still malfunctioning, just like Cisco's hands were after the first fight against Cicada.

Oh, Cisco. The thought of his friend twisted Barry's stomach and brought a veil of darkness in front of his eyes.

Suddenly, an unexpected shiver passed in the CSI's back. That was going to sound crazy, even from someone who once called himself the impossible, but Barry could've sworn he felt a presence standing with him, in this empty room, at this instant. Despite the logical part of his brain telling him that there was no such thing as ghosts, his heart picked up the pace and hammered painfully in his chest.

Swiftly getting up and spinning on his heels, Barry made a full 180 turn on himself to look behind him and saw nothing but the balcony of the lounge standing in front of him. Central city's beautiful blue sky and tall buildings were staring back at the man in a silent answer to Barry's crazy interrogation; he indeed was alone in the room. Slowly, Barry let go of the breath he didn't notice he had been holding.

His imagination was still running wild, and his eyes were still wide open. Why was he still having that feeling someone was observing him?

_Knock knock_

The resonating sound of someone, or something, knocking against a wooden frame almost had Flash jumping out of his skin as he quickly turned around once more, with twice the speed this time, to face the source of the sound.

"Dad?"

Standing at the entrance was his daughter from the future who was wearing a long striped blue and white shirt with pale washed up jeans. A lock of dark brown hair was partially covering her kind eyes that were quickly filling themselves with worry at the sight laying in front of her.

"Are you okay? You look a little pale."

"I... ther-" stammered the scarlet speedster, turning his upper body slightly to point the back of the room for a second before facing his daughter again once he realized he was at a loss of words.

What was the point of explaining something that didn't happen and would only cause the young lady to get even more anxious about her father's mental state than she already was? Chuckling instead, Barry put his closed fists on his hips.

"Yeah, sorry. I got lost in my thoughts for a second there and you scared me."

Reassured by the answer, Nora tender's face got taken over by a sad smile, one that faded just as fast when she spotted the half-eaten sandwich laying on the table and next to the sheet covered sofa where Barry slept. Her features saddened a tad more when she saw how messed up the sheets were; a clear sign that the nightmares didn't go anywhere.

"Still having these bad dreams?" She asked with a sigh, already knowing the answer.

Following her glance, Barry spotted the same two elements that caught his daughter's attention and carefully avoided to make eye contact again. His silence was all the confirmation the young woman needed.

"You need to take better care of yourself. You need to eat and sleep," she gently said while approaching her father.

From the corner of his eyes, still refusing to make eye contact, Barry caught something that closely resembled pity. If there was one thing he didn't need right now, it was that.

"I know, Nora. I'm trying, believe me. I am. It's just... it was my fault. Everything is," he awkwardly tried to explain, looking away and barely feeling the gentle hand that went for his left bicep that was showing up out of his grey t-shirt.

"I was there. It wasn't your fault, and I'm not just saying it to make you feel better. It wasn't. You gotta stop fighting this."

The hero nodded, before taking his left arm out of XS's grasp and bringing the back of his hand to his forehead.

"Is it just me or it's getting hot in here?"

"Not really, I'm fine," instantly said Nora, reaching out and grabbing back her father's bare arm, "you don't feel hot either."

"I don't feel so good," answered back Barry before wincing in discomfort between his tightly closed teeth. Moving his left arm away from his head, he put his arm behind his back and allowed for his hand to reach his injury, "I should probably go see Caitlin about that."

Something was definitely up with that wound, but the hero just couldn't put his finger on what that was. One moment it was healing nicely and the next, it was as bad as when he first woke up. And, what about his powers? Were they ever going to come back? Not that Barry was real hero material anymore after what happened. How was he supposed to save the world, again, when he couldn't protect his own best friend?

Once more lost in his thoughts, he missed the faceless shadow hovering over the ground near the entrance that backed away, out of sight.

"I'll go get her, just get downstairs," answered his daughter before rushing out in a blast of wind and mixed purple and yellow flashes of lightning.

Talk about fast; by the time Barry managed to get down, cursing against the quickly decreasing pain, Caitlin was finishing getting ready to receive him with the same pity in her face that Nora had.

If his team and family could just stop looking at him like he was some broken puppy, it might help get better, mentally speaking at least.

"Sit on the bed," instructed the doctor to her patient who complied, his feet dangling off the edge. Not wasting any time, a hand came on his forehead.

"You don't feel hot. But I'll still run some tests to make sure. Take off your shirt so I can check your injury," firmly said Caitlin, back into full-on, detached, doctor mode.

"I feel way better now than I did a moment ago. I don't get it, is there something wrong with me or not?" Asked Barry as he slipped his t-shirt over his head and exposed his muscular torso.

"Let me be the judge of that," said the doctor, barely giving enough time for the speedster to open his mouth before she pushed a thermometer inside of it. What happened to her bedside matters anyway?

No waiting for it to beep, the doctor moved around her patient and the bed to take a look at the source of his discomfort, palpating it hard enough to bring back the pain and causing a muffled groan from the hero, who almost dropped the thermometer. Thankfully, it finally beeped, and Iris' husband took it out of his mouth before gratefully put it next to him.

"Ow! Watch the merchandise," protested Barry even if his cries had no effects.

"I'm sorry, but I have to do it. Just relax and stop fighting, would you?"

Fine. If that's what everyone wanted him to do, Barry was going to comply and force his body to relax.

"When will my powers come back?" He asked, looking away and toward the door that was leading to the cortex while his auburn doctor friend was continuing her examination.

"I'm not sure... but I'm certain they will. The amount of dark matter in Cicada's dagger is like anything I've ever seen, so I'm not surprised there are still residues in your body," as she spoke, Caitlin moved back around the bed to face him again. "We'll to do more tests in a few days if you're not getting better by then. Give me your arm now; I want to take another blood sample."

Silently, Barry complied once more. What else could he do? He was no doctor. If anyone was to figure out what was wrong, it was Killer Frost's host. The only course of action that was available was to allow her the time to do every examination she wanted to. When she was done with her initial tasks, Caitlin moved to the computer and her medical equipment.

"It's going to take me a moment to examine it all. Go stretch your legs, it will do you some good."

"Yeah..." Unconvincingly mumbled Barry, carefully pushing himself off the bed and back on the ground.

Dragging his heavy foot on the concrete ground, the Central City's protector pushed the door open and slid outside the room without adding another word, too exhausted mentally and physically to do so. Slowly, he forced his beaten body to advance in the hallway, walking in the direction of the lounge. Except, after only taking a few steps, a tingling sensation started manifesting in his body and began to grow exponentially worse by the second, sending his mind into high alert. The then-gone agony in his back was about to come back at full strength at any time now; the feeling before the white-hot pain would run him over like a train was becoming familiar. This thing was happening too often to be normal.

One time was an abnormality, two times were random coincidences, but three times? It wasn't natural. That part was becoming more certain. A pain this intense just doesn't randomly leave and come back in such matter, especially if Caitlin kept on saying everything physical was normal and his stab wound was healing.

Something, or someone, had to be causing this on purpose. A shiver ran down the man's back as a realization hit him; that something had to be close, probably closer than he thought, closer than he knew.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Let me know your thoughts in the comments. Anyone has any idea about what the shadow wants and what it is?


	3. The shadow

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The shadow attacks Barry and Team Flash and the haunting gets worse

Something was close. Something had managed to enter the lab and was about to make Barry suffer bad. Admittedly, the part about making it inside the lab wasn't surprising considering how non-existent their security was, but it didn't change the fact that things were about to become really dangerous and real fast. Just as predicted, the agony in Barry's back increased exponentially in an instant, and a sudden shout of pain erupted pass the man's lips at the same moment he turned on himself to make a full 360 degrees scan of his surroundings.

"Barry..." Growled a muffled, deep and seemingly distant, voice. Seemingly being the keyword as the being that spoke these words was barely thirty feet or so away. It was standing in the middle of the cortex and right in front of the speedster.

The enemy was an almost translucent, human-shaped, shadow floating over the floor. His height was just a tad taller than the CSI, and the being's legs were so close to each other that were mixing, making it very difficult to distinguish one from the other. It was hard to tell considering how all the unknown creature' facial traits were lost in the darkness, but Barry's best guess was that that thing was a man with little, or no hair, or hat.

"What do you wa-" tried to inquire Flash only to grunt in pain when the shadow made a step, figuratively speaking, toward him. Quickly rising tears were clouding his vision and making it difficult to discern his adversary. Clenching his fists together on his side, Barry desperately tried to summon up his speed, but still remained locked out of his powers.

Powerless, the hero tried to back up slowly, but only ended up badly stumbling, which caused his right knee painfully hit the ground.

"C-" he tried to call out for help while visually searching for any weapon in the cortex entrance or the hallway, just to find none.

His pulse picked up the pace. Time was running out, and his enemy was closing on him. But, despite the imminent sense of danger, something else caught Barry's attention. Another sound, another voice coming from behind the shadow and near the red suit:

"Everything's going to be okay," whispered a voice as smooth as the breeze, which dramatically contrasted with the life or death situation Barry was potentially facing at this instant.

Whatever the real intentions of this translucent thing were, it probably wasn't irradiating paralysing pain just to say hello.

"It's going to be okay," whispered the strange voice again at the same time in the back of the room.

Forcing his mind back into the game and actively focussing on ignoring the newly appeared distraction, Barry put his left hand's palm on the ground to avoid completely colliding with the unforgivable ground. Tic Toc. Time was running, and in a few seconds, the creature would be close enough to touch and harm the CSI further than he already had.

"Barry-" whispered the unidentified third party, drawing once more the attention to itself, despite Barry's strong will to focus on the most pressing matters. Except, while it did seem to come from somewhere further back in the lab's main room, it was also coming from everywhere and nowhere at the same time.

That tone. That sound. Oh God, it sounded so much like Cisco. Unable to resist, Barry's eyes darted around in search of the origin of that voice.

"Barry!" Shouted a newcomer. It was Caitlin this time, there was no mistake on that, and she was rushing out of the medical room, probably alerted by the commotion. Why did it take so long, anyway? How concentrate was she exactly in her work?

The most important thing was; the cavalry was there. Just behind Barry, Killer Frost's host evaluated the scene in a blink of an eye before fearlessly putting herself in front of her paralysed friend.

"You stay away from him!" She growled menacingly.

The creature, or shadow, called it however you wanted, wasted no time in raising his almost translucent arms and hit the doctor standing right in front of him before she had any time to react. It hit her hard for that matter. Their opponent's body might look a bit like smoke, but his attacks were real. Under the strong impact, Caitlin went flying across the cortex and to the left before slamming into the wall with a sickening thump.

"Caitlin!" Shouted Barry, grinding his teeth and fighting to get back up with everything he had, pushing himself behind his limits like only heroes can.

The anger boiling under his skin pushed his adrenaline to the roof and allowed Barry's suffering body to mobilize energy he didn't think he still had anymore. The only issue is, he wasn't going to get back up fast enough to stop his adversary from, once more, attacking the doctor who was still lying still on her belly at the same spot she landed.

Barry's heroic efforts lasted 'till the sight of what was behind the shadow turned all his muscles to jelly. Cisco?

The dead hero was standing silently next to the suit, looking toward the ground with sadness filling his eyes and he was wearing the same t-shirt he did the day of his untimely death.

"It's gonna be okay," clearly repeated Cisco's... Cisco's what? Hallucination? Ghost? Whatever it was, it wasn't going away, and it surely wasn't helping his old team in their attempt at fighting this new threat.

Caitlin's extended right arm started twitching, all the way to her hand, proving she was still conscious in some ways, but it wasn't nearly enough to defend herself from her enemy. Slowly, the shadow reached out for the still stunned doctor, picked her up by the collar and lifted her off the ground. His other hand, if that extremity could be called that, went to wrap itself around her throat.

"Caitlin!" Shouted Barry again as loud as he could, ignoring the building pressure inside his head from the hammer in it hitting him repeatedly. Brutally forcing himself for one second to look away from the ghostly apparition of his best friend, deceased best friend, Barry concentrated all his attention on the attack. Grunting, he gathered all the strength he had into his legs and pushed up. Or, he tried to, but only managed to send his head spinning and the rest of his body to fail him completely.

Like a helpless infant, or a puppet who got cut loose, the CSI's whole self sprawled on the ground and his head harshly connected with the floor. Once more, the young man was proving himself unworthy of the hero's title as all he could do was lay there paralyzed, panting heavily in agony, while his other best was about to die. On the bright side, if there was one, he wasn't going to be forced to see everything unfold as his helpless body had his back turned on the scene, and he was left staring in the opposite direction.

Other than Caitlin's struggles to get any oxygen inside her body, all Iris's husband could hear was the creature growling at the doctor with an unnaturally deep and disturbing voice.

"You can't stop me for-"

Whatever it was going to say got abruptly cut short when an unexpected freezing ray passed right next to Barry's face and went straight to the mysterious figure. Even if the hero wasn't in any position to see what was happening, he could still hear the sound of ice breaking apart and crashing on the floor in countless pieces a few instants later. Not long after that, Joe's adoptive son sensed his pain levels quickly decreasing. It was over, for now, and hurried heels clicking on the ground made it to his ears.

As the unbearable sensations slowly went away, Barry closed his eyes and breathed heavily, concentrating on getting air in and out his constricted chest. In and out. Nice and easy, just until he could be able to hear his thoughts.

A hand that was insistently shaking his shoulder brought him back to reality and caused Flash to open his heavy eyelids. His slowing heartbeats spiked again, and his pupils dilated instantly at the sight of the way-too-close face staring straight into his eyes. Kneeling right in front of him and with a hand still on his left shoulder was his wife Iris with a cold gun laying down next to her.

"Barry? Honey?" She insisted, looking up over her husband's body to call out another person. "I think he's coming around."

"Cisco?" Asked the hero, confusingly blinking at his wife first, then behind her to notice the vision of his deceased friend was gone.

His confusion got mirrored in his wife's expression who made eye contact for a second before looking up again at the other person who was approaching quickly from behind Barry.

"You okay?" Inquired the reporter.

"I'll be, thanks for the rescue. How is he?" Answered Caitlin with a slightly hoarse voice, thanks to the earlier maltreatment, before kneeling next to her friend while massaging her damaged throat.

"He's confused," explained Iris, wincing in sympathy at the doctor's pain and letting go of the physical contact with the Flash.

"Barry? Can you hear us?" Gently asked Caitlin, smiling simultaneously with the reporter when their previously unresponsive hero finally made eye contact and finally spoke up.

"What the hell happened?" Weakly asked Barry.

Both girls chuckled lightly despite having just solved a highly dangerous situation. Everyone was ok. It was going to be.

"You married one badass woman," commented Caitlin.

"Where is he? Where's Cisco?" He commented, looking around.

His question hit the women like a ton of bricks. Confused, they both looked at each other while Barry pushed against the ground with his left arm to put himself on his elbow and forearm and gained some height to scan the room.

"Can you get up?" Caitlin chose to carefully ask, deciding against continuing the conversation around the subject that was causing her to gather some tears in her eyes.

Disappointed and badly sore all over, Barry winced and mentally scanned his condition before tentatively nodding. The pain was dissipation quickly. At least now they knew the cause. The next step was going to be to figure out what was that thing, how it was sending these metals waves of agony and, more importantly, what did it want? What was his goal?

Not too long after that, Barry found himself sitting behind the Cortex's main desk, lost in his thoughts, as he was watching for the third time in a row the security footage of what just transpired. His elbows were positioned on the table, and his chin was resting on his tangled fingers while Caitlin and Iris were standing not too far from the suit's mannequin with their glances alternating between the pensive hero and the same footage playing on the wall's screen. The dark matter scan was resting on the table in the corner of the room.

The cameras captured the floating figure mentally attacking Barry first, without ever making physical contact, then the ice meta before being turned into a full-on icicle thanks to Iris's surprise arrival and quick intervention. After letting go of his victim he was attempting to choke, their adversary swiftly phased out of his frozen prison and passed right through the wall.

It was saying a lot about the kind of crazy world the team was living in when nothing about this fight against a mysterious apparition could be considered weird by anyone. They faced a lot worse in the past few years. The real worrisome element in this picture, from Barry's point of view, was that the shadow was the only intruder in the full footage. Even if the recording had a perfect look of the entire room, there wasn't a single trace of Cisco where the speedster could've sworn he saw him. How could this be? Barry saw him clear as day, as clear as he was seeing the rest of his friends and family at this very instant.

For now, it was probably better to dismiss the whole thing as a pure hallucination caused by his suffering body that was about to lose consciousness. That's all it was to it, right? After all, he heard his voice before, but seeing Cisco standing right in front of him only happened once, so it might never happen again. There was a perfectly good, and sane, explanation about all of this. But, despite the rational part of Barry's brain working overtime to reassure him about his mental state, doubt was still slowly crawling into his mind and this doubt was only growing stronger with every moment. What if?

"You really felt fine during the attack?" Asked the hero for the hundredth time, not even bothering to look up at Caitlin who shook her head in an almost imperceptible way.

"I'm telling you, I didn't feel any changes of temperature or any physical pain. Well, other than being thrown to the wall or choked."

Why was the CSI expecting any different answer to the same question? Was his experience different because of his injury? But, what about that Cisco's vision?

"Dad!" Exclaimed the high-pitched and full of worry's voice of Nora West-Allen as she entered the room a few steps ahead of Ralph.

"We heard what happened. Thank God, you're okay," she expressed as she strode forward with long strides to join her father who got up from his seat and turned around to greet her.

"I'm okay, don't worry," he answered with his arms wide open to accept her embrace.

Stopping behind the duo, with his hands in his pockets, Ralph stared straight at the screen that had just restarted to play the feed for the fourth time, right at the moment Barry started experimenting massive discomfort.

"Anyone mind to tell me what's that poltergeist doing in our lab?" Inquired Ralph to every person in the room just before the father and daughter duo let go of each other and turned around to look at the security footage together.

"We don't know what it is just yet," explained Caitlin, before pointing at the dark matter scanner with a mildly subtle movement of the head, "but it seems like it was emitting crazy readings."

"So, we're talking about a person? A meta, right?" Assumed Nora which caused Barry to shrug before answering.

"We don't know, yet."

As a sudden thought jumped into the young XS's mind, she snapped her fingers in excitation and exclaimed, "oh! Is that Shade? Is he out of prison yet?"

As recollection hit Iris, the young woman's mother opened her mouth to add something but was interrupted by her husband.

"No, it's not. I never experienced anything close to that when I was close to Shade. He didn't have any powers that could hurt me mentally or physically not without making contact."

"Barry is right," supported Caitlin.

"Can we track that thing?" Asked Ralph, moving forward with a few steps to walk past the main desk and get closer to the end of the room.

"At this point, I'm more worried about what it wants with Barry. Does it know he's the Flash-" Iris intervened, looking straight at her husband as she was talking.

 _I was the Flash_ , thought Barry, but chose to keep quiet and ignore the weight of the worry glances locked on him to keep looking at the screen on the wall that was still displaying the unknown creature… and the absence of Cisco.

"-or does it has a grudge against Barry?" Completed the reporter.

"We'll find a way to track him," started to say Caitlin even if they all knew their expert at tracking down stuff and people were gone, a thought that had Barry sighing and leaning forward to put back his elbows on the desk while still standing.

"Meanwhile. Barry, you need to rest," added the doctor.

The mention of his name jostled the speedster who straightened himself up. Sure, he was tired, had been since the incident, but he wasn't sick. He wasn't a burden.

"You really need to clear your head after what you said earlier," Iris said, approaching her husband and earning, as she was finishing her sentence, a confused look from her grown-up daughter to whom she mouthed I'll explain later.

The terrifying thought that, maybe, just maybe, he was a liability and was losing his mind, crossed Barry's mind. Could it be? There has to be a logical explanation; there just has to be. Unless it only was wishful thinking.

"Barry? Are you okay?" Asked Iris, who suddenly found herself straight next to the hero and her daughter, pressing her hands and body on his side. When did she get so close?

"Hum, what?" Asked Barry, confused and blinking a few times. How long did he get lost in this tornado of depressing reflexions that were quickly spiralling down?

"Go rest, the rest of us will figure a way to track this thing down with the sample. Just stop fighting," soothly whispered the woman.

Barry frowned and swiftly turned his head to face his wife. When did they take a sample? Exactly how long did he get disconnected from the world earlier?

"What... wh... sample?" He stuttered, earning more puzzled expression from Caitlin and Iris who shared uncertainty looks between themselves before looking back at the hero.

The sentence that came next made him feel like he took a kick in the guts. "Barry, you're the one who took it, right after the attack."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Evil writer or not evil, that is the question mwa mwa mwa
> 
> Anyone ready to take a guess; is Barry going crazy or is he being haunted? Let me know your thoughts and see you next Friday, no delay, for the 4th chapter (even possibly Thursday as I'm on the road Friday)


	4. Don't give up on me

"Barry, you're the one who took it, right after the attack."

That simple sentence knocked the wind out of the hero. It couldn't be. It wasn't enough that he was being haunted in his dreams or seeing eerie visions, he also had to lose part of his memories even if he didn't recall experiencing a loss of time recently. For the first time since this whole ordeal started, Barry allowed the most important question of all to make his way into his mind; was he going crazy?

No, he wasn't. There was a perfectly reasonable explanation for all of this. There had to be.

But if that was a certainty, why was there an uneasy feeling growing in his stomach? Taking a moment to regain his composure the hero buried his head in his hands while feeling the soothing massaging gestures of his wife on his shoulders. Allowing his shoulders to slump forward slightly, he barely felt the way his nails scratched his forehead almost hard enough to pierce the skin.

"Are you okay?" Gently asked Iris after his silence extended for longer than a few seconds.

"What's wrong with me?" Asked his muffled voice still hidden behind his hands.

"It's going to be alright; we'll figure out a solution, together." Iris promised, not seeing the nods of approval all around her. "You need to rest and while you do, the rest of us we'll take care of that shadow. He's not going to hurt you anymore."

"Don't worry, Barry, we'll beat this thing, and everything will be fine, just like always," added Caitlin as Barry was lowering his hands.

Moving away, the hero broke the physical contact with his wife and started walking toward the exit of the room, but stopped after a few minutes and quickly, but softly, requested; "just give me a minute."

The instant his sentence was over, he continued walking under the worried glances of his whole team and brushed his daughter's shoulder as he passed by her before leaving the room. He wasn't sure if anyone even heard his voice over the sound of his rapid steps rushing out, but he couldn't care less. Barry just needed a moment to gather his thoughts and figure out his next move. Why did he feel like hunting down the shadow wasn't the answer they were looking for? Was that thing the real source of the problem? Was the Flash losing his mind?

Dragging his feet on the ground, Barry turned the corner of the hallway just before a refreshing breeze brushed his face. The hero's heartbeat instantly picked up the pace, and his feet made a complete halt. Was that….? A murmur in the distance partly answered the man's question; he could feel it. He could sense him and, after his widely opened eyes darted all over the beige walls for an instant, Barry suddenly mysteriously knew where to go next.

Like he was also losing the ability to control his mobility, his limbs went back into action, and his long legs advanced toward the closest room; Cisco's lab.

"Cisco?" He asked, gasping and carefully taking a quick peek inside the room.

Washed over by conflicting emotions, the CSI simultaneously felt his chest clenching and his throat closing, two actions that considerably diminished the quantity of oxygen allowed to enter and leave his tensed body in desperate need of an answer. It was with his heart hammering in his constricted chest that Barry's eyes moved to start scanning the entire room.

It was empty. There wasn't a single soul in sight. As he was struggling between disappointment and relief, the hero's lungs released all the air that had been forcibly kept inside before deeply inhaling again. What was he expecting? To see his friend alive and well?

Or did he think he was going to see Vibe's ghost again, a question that would only accelerate the collapse of his sanity?

While sighing deeply, the speedster walked straight to the closest chair, the one behind Cisco's computer, and let his body slumped forward with his forearms on the desk and his glance looking at his reflection in the computer screen. Barry's green eyes squinted to observe a little closer the stranger who was staring right back at him with pale skin and large and pronounced dark circles under his eyes. Between that and his claims about his deceased friend, no wonder his loved ones were so worried about him.

It was probably best to take one step back here and think; Barry was a scientist, and one living in a city where the impossible became their new normal just under five years ago. So, it was logical to conclude there was a rational explanation to all of this, right? The Scarlet Speedster was exhausted and grieving; two elements that could, theoretically, lead to hallucinations. That was, of course, mostly happening in the case of extreme sleep deprivation or rare grieving episodes. But both these theories were undoubtedly better and more likely than the ghost one.

Or, was it – considering how they fought a magical, immortal, Egyptian priest just a few years ago?

A loud gasp escaped the man's lips when a ghostly form suddenly reflected into the monitor's black screen. The apparition that seemingly appeared just behind the young hero who was wearing a beige jacket and jeans wasn't the mysterious shadow; it was Vibe. The dead hero was still wearing the same clothes he did when he died, and he was looking directly at his speedster's friend.

"Cisco?" Hesitantly asked the speedster, his entire body suddenly wholly paralysed in fear that every movement was going to cause Vibe to disappear again into thin air.

The only thing Barry dared to do was to glue his eye on the reflection and hold his breath, once more, despite his brain's protests. Any noise, any movement, could cause this mirage to go away, a fear that only grew stronger when Cisco's image flickered for an instant before becoming seemingly solid. This thing, whatever it was, looked so real now.

The deceased hero's lips started moving slowly, but no sound came out for a moment, a moment that lasted long enough for Barry to start believing he wasn't going to hear his friend's voice this time around. Then, gradually, Cisco's facial movements transformed into spoken words;

"-ry, don't give up on me, now. You can't," stated the vision with unmistakably emotion shaking every syllable.

Then, a new sound came to Barry's ears: footsteps, very quickly approaching ones.

Swiftly, Barry wiped away the water building up in his eyes and made a full 180 degrees turn on his chair. Then, as he jumped to his feet, he cursed under his breath when he realized that Cisco was gone, again. Barry clenched his fists and took a deep breath to control the rising anger that was mixing with the deception; who just interrupted the session and chased his friend away? He was so close to making a connection.

What if Cisco was really a ghost who just needed to pass one last message along before moving on? Maybe Barry shouldn't be encouraging his visions, as he still had no clue if they were reals or not, but he couldn't help himself. He needed to know what the ghost wanted.

A new voice brought him out of his thoughts and back to reality:

"Rookie? Are you in there?"

Ralph. Of course. Seconds later, the Elongated Man appeared at the entrance of the room. To be more precise, at first, he only passed right by the place without stopping, but he moved back a few seconds later to make sure he really saw his friend in that room. Once he managed to confirm Barry's whereabouts, he smiled and entered the lab.

"There you are, I've been searching for you," said the P.I. who approached the speedster with his hands inside the pockets of his blue suit.

The relaxed expression on Ralph's face somehow managed to annoy Barry more than it should and more than he wanted to admit it.

"Are you okay?" Asked Ralph.

"Am I..." Barry sighed and slightly shook his head, feeling the rising frustration. "why do I feel like I'm the only one still grieving him?" he asked, raising his voice, "why are you guys all seem fine with what happened already? He's been gone for barely a week!"

"Rookie..." slowly said Ralph while taking his hands out of his pockets, clearly taken off guard by the sudden outburst.

"Why am I the only person who really seems to care about what happened?" Questioned Barry. The exhaustion and mental stress of the last week sure did a great job to decrease his patience and rise his irritability exponentially.

Sighing, Ralph lost his half smile and his features saddened. "I miss him too, you know. We all do, it's just-"

Moving around his interlocutor, Elongated Man gestured in the air while searching for the right words before turning back to face Flash again, "I regret what happened, I regret I wasn't there when it happened. I should've been there. I should've stopped it. I feel like if I give in to these feelings, they'll never stop coming out," he admitted.

The man's confession managed to calm down Barry's emotions, as the hero exhaled. What was he thinking? It wasn't like him to snap like that; it seemed he genuinely needed a lot of rest. And, as Ralph told him a few weeks before Devoe took over his body, he became a master in the art of hiding his feelings.

"I'm sorry, I shouldn't have implied that," he started to apologize before adding, "you can't blame yourself for what happened, there was nothing you could've done."

"The same goes to you," Ralph argued back as he moved closer to his best friend with sadness all over his face. "Look, right now, we know how hard you're taking all of this. We're just trying to be strong for you."

Slowly, Barry brought his head to his forehead and massaged it, grateful for the way the motion was also hiding his face from the other superhero. Of course, why didn't he think of that? His team was always going to try and protect him the same way he was protecting them. Between that and his earlier admission of seeing Cisco's ghost in the cortex, chances of his team taking him seriously now weren't very high.

"Listen, Rookie," continued Ralph after a moment, "until this shadow is taken care of, it's probably best if you stay here, in the lab so that we can protect you. At least, until your powers are back to normal."

Barry chuckled; talk about a reverse of fortune. A few months ago, he was the one offering the buddy system to the Elongated Man and inviting him to stay downstairs to keep him safe from Devoe. Now here Barry was, being the one person their new enemy was trying to harm and being the one needing protection. What happened to the days where he was a hero and the one protecting other people? That time felt so far away, way farther away than a week.

"Don't really have a choice, do I?" He asked, with the corner of his lips twitching in the first indication of a smile of this whole conversation.

"No, no you don't," quickly answered Ralph, bringing back his playful smile to his face. "We're going to keep you safe, don't worry. Just try to relax. Don't fight; we'll get through this."

Barry nodded, grateful, "thanks man, I'll do my best-"

The hero stopped mid-sentence as the words died in his throat. What was he going to say? What was he going to do? Stop fighting? For some reason, it sounded wrong, it seemed like just another word for giving up, and that wasn't in his hero's genes. But it was also possible he was just becoming paranoid; his friends were trying to help him. What if the answer was there and was this simple? What if all he needed to go was to stop struggling against his guilt and let go of everything to get better?

"No problem, Rookie," said the P.I. who didn't notice the hesitation at the end of the speedster's sentence, before swiftly adding, "you should be with your family, they're really concerned about you."

"I'll go see them," promised the hero, "just give me a minute."

"Alright, take care of yourself," gently requested Ralph before starting to walk in the direction of the exit.

Left on his own, Barry took the time to carefully listen to the silence while holding his breath and waiting, waiting for his friend to come back. Except, whatever it was that he thought he felt or saw earlier, it was gone now, so the CSI sighed deeply. It probably was his imagination playing tricks on him.

Unless, maybe, it wasn't just in his head.

The following morning, when Barry opened his eyes in his new temporary quarter in the lab, it was to sense that something was wrong. As he was staring at the ceiling, he started feeling again that same eerie sensation that had been haunting him and which was accompanied by that familiar shiver cruising down his spine. Tensing up, he turned his head on his right to get a good look at his wife and relaxed just a tad; Iris was still soundly sleeping next to him, undisturbed by the strange energy surrounding them. The couple spent the whole night downstairs, where Barry could rest while staying under the protection of his friends. The room in which the hero and the reporter had been sleeping in also happened to be where Jesse and Harry stayed when they came back from rescuing the young girl from Zoom's grasp years ago.

While he was still staring straight at Iris, Barry could've sworn he saw something passing fast in the open entrance leading into the hallway. Which one of the recent apparitions was it? Was the shadow coming back or was it something, or someone, else?

Needing to know, Barry silently stretched himself and moved the thin sheet from over his legs before gently depositing his bare feet on the cold ground. The S.T.A.R. labs' beds weren't the most comfortable, by far, by at least the facility's floor wasn't creaking under his weight like it would at home. After one last look back, to ensure his wife was still sleeping, the speedster walked toward the entrance, slowly and carefully. Should he call for backup? Or, should he grab his suit? No. If that were the shadow coming back for vengeance, he would've felt the pain already. And, even if he were to change from his black t-shirt and grey leggings to his suit, it wouldn't prevent him from being paralysed by his enemy.

According to the watch Barry was wearing, it was only 5 am, meaning he just slept for a few hours, and yet, he wasn't feeling tired. But that probably was because of the adrenaline in his veins. So, should he go right or left in the hallway? After looking on both sides, Barry made a choice to follow his instinct and turned left, which was the direction that was leading almost immediately into another turn. The moment he started taking that fast approaching turn, a voice startled him.

"Barry," called out Cisco's voice.

Swiftly turning around, with his heart hammering in his chest, Barry found himself once again face to face with his deceased best friend, who was barely standing a few feet in front of him. He could almost reach out and touch him, but Barry didn't dare to take such actions in fear of making Vibe disappear.

"Cisco," he breathed out, unable to find any other word to say.

For a few anxious seconds, all the hero did was stare back at his friend before finally swallowing his saliva, and anxiety, and speaking up again:

"Why are you here? Why are you haunting me?" He inquired, struggling to control his shaking voice.

The silence was the only answer he got.

"Is it because I didn't save you? I'm sorry, Cisco, I tried. I truly did," tried the speedster again, "what is i-" Upon seeing his friend's lips finally moving and Vibe's opening his mouth, Barry swiftly forced himself to stop making any sound, as he needed to hear and comprehend every word.

"You can't give up on me," said the dead breacher to his confused friend.

"I… I don-" Suddenly, Barry's eyes widened. Oh God, could it be…? Where there wasn't any a moment ago, doubt and hope started to manifest.

"Cisco, are you still alive? Are you trapped, somewhere? Are you trying to vibe me a message?" He asked under his breath.

"Don't give up, man, keep fighting," added Cisco instead of directly answering to the interrogations.

As he was speaking, Cisco's gaze moved just a tad to the right, a movement that forced the speedster to manoeuvre his head to correct the shift in position and keep the eye contact.

"I am fighting; I'm not giving up on you. Just, please, tell me where you are. I'll come to get you, I'll save you," insisted Barry, stepping his right foot in front of him and extending his arm to grab his friend.

Or, try to grab him was more accurate as his hand passed right through.

"Tell me how I can save you, please!" Insisted the speedster again, feeling his anxiety rising to the roof as his friend's image started fluctuating before starting to dissipate. No no no!

"I need to know where you are, don't go!" Pleaded Barry just before the voice that manifested behind him almost made him jump out of his skin.

"Dad? Who are you talking to?" Asked Nora's voice behind him, causing the father to turn around and look at her daughter with his lips parted.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Let me know what you thought. Do you guys want more?


	5. Mirage

"Dad?" Inquired XS again to her father who was looking at her like a deer caught in headlights, uncertain where to start.

Considering how close she was and how she wasn't using her speed, there was no doubt that Nora was seeing the superhero's ghost and that she heard him. She probably had been witnessing the phenomena for a few seconds now. So, why was she asking the question?

"He's right there!" Exclaimed Barry as an answer, swiftly turning his whole body once more to point energetically at the spot where Cisco was standing. His action was made just in time to see Vibe finishing to disappear entirely in the air like a mirage.

"There! You saw that?" He inquired feverishly. He was finally going to have a witness to testify his seeing. He now had a proof he wasn't going crazy and that Cisco was alive.

Except, when he faced Nora again, it was to see the young woman frowning deeply in apparent confusion, "dad, there's no one there."

Upon hearing these words, Barry's whole expression fell instantly, just like a kick suddenly landed in his guts. His daughter's answer left him with this numbing sensation spreading in his entire being and with a bitter taste in his mouth. It was like being hit by lightning all over again; Nora was behind him as he spoke his last words to his deceased friends; there was no way for her to miss it, right?

"He... h... was... r'gh there," he stuttered awkwardly, blinking. "Cisco was there."

Sadness and anguish slowly took over the young woman's face who gently, as she was approaching her father the same way she would approach a scared child, went to grab Barry's arm.

"Come on; let's go see if Caitlin is awake."

"He's still alive, I think he might still be," he tried to explain to his daughter, whose features were filled with sadness and pity, as she was trying to drag him away.

"I know, I know. Come on," softly answered Nora.

Sighing deeply and giving in, Barry allowed himself to be slowly taken away and toward the medical bay where he knew more exams would await him.

What else was he supposed to do, other than allowed it? So, that's what he did.

"There, I'm all done," confirmed Caitlin, almost a full hour later, while looking down at the tablet in her hands one last time for confirmation, "I have all the data I need."

Nodding slowly, Barry proceeded to uncross his arms that were resting on his chest and sitting up in the medical bed before disconnecting the sensors on both sides of his head.

"You're okay?" Gently asked Iris to her husband.

The woman was sitting right next to the bed, at the same place she had been during the whole examination, to support the hero during the series of tests to try and investigate the cause of his visions.

"I am," assured Barry, turning his head in her direction to face her and forcing a smile on his lips.

After depositing her electronic device on her desk and taking off her gloves, Caitlin turned on herself and made her way back to the back to collect the sensors that Barry was handing to her. Doing so, she walked right next to Nora who was standing still near the door to stay out of the way while still being there for her family.

"So, what's wrong?" XS worriedly asked with her arms crossed on her chest. "What's causing the visions?"

Without looking at her interlocutor, since the doctor was busy taking back all her equipment, including the pulse oximeter at the tip of Barry's finger, she carefully answered. "I'm not sure just yet; his vitals are good, and the preliminary data don't seem to indicate anything out of the ordinary."

"I told you, I'm fine," reinterred Barry for the hundredth time since being brought back to the medical bay for examination.

Honestly, he was feeling as far away as possible from the definition of fine, mentally speaking at least. But he hated all the looks being thrown at him. What just unfolded was a shock and a setback, but like Joe once told him, his greatest power wasn't his speed, it was his ability to keep his head up and stay optimistic. After everything they've faced in the last couple of years, including aliens and his daughter from the future, a logical explanation wasn't out of the question just yet. They just needed to find it. And it wasn't him going crazy.

Looking around, the hero started visually searching for his shirt he took off and handed to his wife when he arrived in the room, quickly finding it on the back of Iris' chair and gesturing at it.

"Hallucinations usually happened when our brain is unable to distinguish the difference between what's truly there and what's being generated by our mind. It's usually triggered when something goes wrong in the relationship between the brain's frontal lobe and the sensory cortex," explained Caitlin after deposing everything back and finally positioning herself in a way where she could face the whole West-Allen clan.

"So, is that what's happening?" Inquired Iris while giving back her husband's shirt who started putting it on again.

"I can't seem to find any issues in my scans; there weren't any indications of an overactive auditory cortex or overactive visual cortex, nor did I find any signs of brain damages. So that's the good news," Caitlin continued while Iris instinctively reached out and grabbed her husband's left hand, "it might just be a temporary side effect of everything Barry's going through; lack of sleep and grief are the most common triggers leading to sporadic hallucinations."

Barry tensed up after hearing Caitlin's last sentence. What he's been through? It happened to all of them, hasn't it? What happened to all of them also grieving their friend? But it's true that guilt was hitting him the strongest, by far. And that this same sentiment had exponentially increased his grief.

"Now that we've concluded that I'm not going schizophrenic, can we contemplate the possibility that it might be real?" Asked Barry prudently, weighing in every word.

"Look, Barry," started to answer Caitlin after a quick shared glance with the hero's wife. "When Ronnie died the first time, or at least I thought he did, I could still feel his presence. I could've sworn a few times he was still there, and I almost heard his voice more than once. These things happen when you lose someone you care about, it will pass. Just give it time."

Unconsciously, Barry closed his fists and squeezed his wife's hand before loudly protesting. "I'm telling you, it's not like that. It was real; he was standing right in front of me just like you are right now."

"Dad, I don't think Caitlin's saying you didn't see it," intervened Nora, walking closer to the group gathered around the bed. "all we're saying is that your mind is playing tricks on you."

Frustrated, the hero shook his head and freed his hand out of Iris' grasp to gesticulate uncontrollably in the air, unable to find the right way to convince everyone.

"He was asking me for help, he was asking me to find him," explained Barry, looking straight into the doctor's eyes before putting his thought into words, "I think he might still be alive, but trapped somewhere. He needs our help; he's been needing it for over a week now!"

"Barr-"

"Don't Barry me; I know what I heard and I know what I saw," as he was speaking, Barry turned around to lock his glance on his wife, searching for any support. "Do you remember when Harry tried to make another particle explosion to give me back my powers? Do you remember how I disappeared out of nowhere?"

Hit by the painful memories that rushed back, Iris gulped. How could she forget that instant when she thought Barry had been evaporated into nothing right in front of her eyes? Unable to speak for a second, she merely nodded, allowing her husband to continue;

"That's what must've happened to Cisco; he just got transported somewhere else, and he's waiting for us to rescue him," presented Barry to his very sceptical audience. "He was there, I'm telling you. He was also there when the shadow attacked us," He insisted strongly.

"Except, why were you the only one who could see him? I didn't," pointed out his daughter.

"I didn't see Cisco during the attack," reminded Caitlin, "and he wasn't on the cameras either."

Barry paused for just a second with his mind working at overtime to search for an answer that could explain all the holes in his theory. As soon as an idea hit his mind, he continued talking. "We've seen this before, with Savitar, remember? He wasn't showing up on any cameras, and only speedsters could see him."

Without even considering the possibility for a second, Nora instantly negatively shook her head and reminded. "But, I didn't see or hear anything and I'm a speedster."

"There's also no reason for Cisco to be in the Speed-force," added Caitlin.

"Alright then, maybe the shadow took him somewhere, and Cisco's trying to vibe me. Maybe he only managed to make a connection with me. It could be possible, right? Maybe that shadow took him into a pocket dimension, like the ones Devoe was using."

Shrugs, hesitation, and silence were the only answers Barry received for a moment before Caitlin found new words to contradict him.

"I... I don't think so, I'm sorry," answered the doctor for the rest of them. "Look, Barry, we believe you when you say that you've seen him. We're not saying you're crazy. You've just been overworking, not eating well and not sleeping a lot since it happened. It's just your mind struggling to find his right balance again, Cisco's gone and the sooner you'll realize that, the easier it will be to move on."

Her short speech caused the West-Allen women to nod their approval, a little gesture that didn't help to calm the speedster down, quite the opposite.

"What's wrong with all of you?" He shouted accusingly. "Why can't you at least consider the possibility he might still be alive?"

"Barry, lis-"

"No! I'm done listening," snapped the hero, interrupting his wife. "You, listen. It's Cisco we're talking about; we can't give up on him like that! It's like you want him to be dead! He was your friend!"

When the hero failed to get the desired reactions, except for a few half-guilty eyes, Barry growled in frustration and moved his body to move his legs over the edge of the bed. After that was done, he pushed against the mattress with the palms of his hands with the clear intention of getting up. His actions caused Nora to walk the few feet remaining between herself and her dad and reached out for him, without daring to make physical contact.

"Where are you going? You should be resting."

"If no one is willing to search for Cisco, then I will," he stated, finishing to get out of bed and orienting himself toward the door.

"Wait," intervened Caitlin, walking in his path with a conflicted and hard to decrypt expression around her eyes as she pushed back her hair behind her shoulders. "You're right. We owed him that much; we owe him to look."

The relief that should've washed over the speeder at this instant never came. It was what Barry wanted to hear a moment earlier, so why wasn't he happy about it? Something wasn't right, but he couldn't put his finger on what that was. His eyebrows furrowed instead for an instant, and his expression lasted long enough for the doctor to continue.

"What's your plan?"

Barry shrugged. Honestly? He didn't have much time to think about one; he just had one vague idea and was hoping to see where it would go from there.

"Um… I thought about going on Earth 19 first and find Gypsy," he suggested. This time, it was Iris' turn to frown in confusion.

"Why Gypsy, I don't-"

"She's a breacher, and she's vibing on the same frequencies than Cisco. If there's anyone in the entire multiverse who can tell us if Cisco is still alive, anywhere, or where he could be, it's her."

Iris nodded her understanding and approval, even if her position behind her husband made it impossible for him to see the action.

"That's as good as a start as any, except for the part you're still having trouble doing pretty much anything with your powers at the moment," she reminded.

"Let me go, I'll find her," said Nora, deciding to intervene in the conversation. "I could leave in a few minutes if you want. Just tell me what she looks like and where I'm supposed to find her and I'll go."

Oh right, his powers were still malfunctioning, to say the least. Barry had genuinely forgotten about that for a second. Looks like he didn't have a choice here.

"We got this, go rest. You look exhausted," added Caitlin, a comment to which Barry could only agree. He was feeling like laying down again.

"Alright, just keep me updated," he requested before dragging his heavy feet outside the lab. If he didn't know any better, he would say that it was almost like the team didn't want to have Cisco back. Like they wanted him to stay dead.

That's unless he was one in complete denial and the only one unable to accept the cold truth. What was up and what was down? Barry couldn't tell anymore, and it was scaring him more than he was willing to admit. There was nobody to get grabbed by Cicada or the shadow, or anyone else, the only things that remained was Vibe's shredded suit. The odds are that Cisco wasn't coming back, ever. What if Gypsy was a dead end? What then? For how long could he send the team on a wild goose chase?

"Just don't think about it right now," he told himself out loud as he turned the corner of the hallway and caught a glimpse of the elevator.

Unconsciously, Barry rose his left hand and brought it to his forehead. Who turned on the heat? There wasn't a single drop of sweat to be wipe despite the walking-in-a-sauna sensation. As vertigo hit, hard, out of nowhere, the speedster stumbled and barely caught himself on the wall, leaning against it with all his mass to stay upright. Was that another attack?

"Arrgg," suddenly gasped the hero at the surprise emergence of a familiar pain in his back, answering his question.

"Barry-" growled the unnaturally deep and distorted voice a second before the ominous shadow flew right through the elevator's door and appeared in front of his enemy.

"Wh… 'ou… w-" tried to ask Barry, obliged to stop halfway in his sentence to reroute all his energy into his shaking legs and to dig his nails into the wall he was leaning on, desperately trying to stay on his feet.

"Wh're 's Cisco?" he asked to the creature that was closing the distance between them. It was only 15 feet away. 10 feet now.

The floating arm extended itself in the direction of the speedster who couldn't move an inch without risking losing his precious and delicate balance.

"Barry," growled the creature again, reaching out for the man's shoulder.

The instant it made contact, a blinding pain shook Barry's insides and spread all over in the blink of an eye. His whole body was overheating, and acid was burning in every vein of his body. The CSI's mouth opened widely intending to shout out in pain, but gasps were the only things to come out.

His knees buckled underneath him, but no additional pain registered from hitting the ground as Barry's whole body was already completely numb and overwhelmed by the waves of agony controlled by the unknown creature. At this very moment, the one thing Barry wished for the most, with all his heart, was just to pass out and leave all this agony behind. Why couldn't he pass out? The pain was too much to hold on and fight.

Just as he started to feel the blissful relief of darkness, a voice nudged him back into reality, only the slightest.

"Barry?" Called out Iris.

No. Iris couldn't be there. She might've saved him last time, but from the sound of her calm tone, she wasn't anywhere near ready to fight, and he was helpless to assist.

"Ir'... do't... com' he-" he struggled to say before closing his eyes once more and swallowing with difficulty, just before a shiver appeared in his body and swiftly moved through all his body, the cold sensation heavily contrasting with the lava taking him over and overheating him.

"Ir… ris," he whispered before he lost all contact to his limbs and body and darkness enveloped him completely, taking him away.

The last sound he heard before going under was his wife urgently calling out for him, and the final thought that crossed his mind was that he was going to wake up and lose her the same way he lost Cisco.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Are you guys still so sure Cisco's alive and Barry isn't going crazy? ;) Your comments are always deeply appreciated, as always


	6. Nightmares

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> HUGE Thanks to each and every one of you who took the time to comment, your support truly means everything :) Working on draft for chapters 7 & 8, and you better get ready cause you're about to really understand everything that happened in the forest and what's going on at the moment with...everything.
> 
> Enjoy!

Shouldn't the pain disappear; or at least, ease significantly while he was out for the count? Wasn't the whole point of dreaming supposed to be to disconnect from your body for a few hours? If that's how things were supposed to be, then why did it seem like Barry's suffering were only growing worse? Worse or staying at the same levels than it was when he passed out.

These sensations also weren't the only weird elements in this dream. For the first time since Cisco's dead, Barry didn't get transported into the forest, nor did he find himself in that eerie void of complete nothingness. No, this time he was lying down on something, some sort of bed, and there were people around him. As much as Barry enjoyed that much-needed change of scenery, he wished it was under different and more comfortable circumstances.

The first thing that came to Barry's mind was the heat. The heat was so intense that it felt like his skin was on the edge of melting right off his body at any second. The second element that popped inside the speedster's mind was the feeling he was surfing on an ocean of pain in the middle of a wild storm and that he was drifting in the elements at the complete the mercy of the waves of agony washing with full strength. It wasn't anything near what he already experienced in his previous dreams, and it could only be compared to the sensation overwhelming him during the encounters with the shadow.

And, even then...

Barry's body arched in a desperate attempt to escape the sharp agony in his back that was high enough to make him wonder if daggers weren't genuinely digging deep and twisting in his flesh. Arching might've been a strong word as the hero's body barely lifted by an inch or so, just enough to break contact with the mildly soft surface underneath his back. Barry desperately needed to wake up and make the pain go away! His fingers dug deep in the sheet underneath, and his eyes struggled to open.

The hero's rib cage was expanding rapidly to accommodate the increased oxygen demand from his lungs while his mind drifted off and started wondering; could the shadow attack him psychically while he was asleep? Was Barry still under the hold of the creature's touch even after going to sleep? What if he couldn't wake up?

When Barry managed to slightly, very slightly, crack open his eyelids, it was to realize the whole world around him was completely blurry. Disturbed and quiet voices were speaking to him unless they were talking to someone else. It was impossible to tell the difference in this mental fog. Unidentified hands turned the speedster on his side and revealed the hazy and thin shape of the one person standing in front of him, a person with long auburn hair cascading down from the head and meeting the form's shoulders, two clues indicating it probably was a woman. Could it be Caitlin?

On the bright side, his torturous dream wasn't carrying the one constant that had been twisting his mind every time he would fall asleep. Or, it hasn't until now. Vibe's voice finally decided to make his dramatic entrance, whistling around;

"Fight this, Barry," whispered the dead meta's voice.

 _'I'm trying, Cisco. I am,'_  thought Barry before the ceiling drunkenly whirled in front of his eyes.

More voices spoke to him insistently, and surrounding him with incomprehensible words coming from nowhere and all around at the same time. In the next second, everything turned to black once more, and all the noises stopped.

As the man's consciousness was left drifting like a lost soul in a void filled with silence, a menacing growl started echoing from all around, and it was calling out his name. Opened or closed eyes didn't change a thing about the emptiness and the complete darkness surrounding the speedster, nor did it help to locate the position of the unknown creature calling him.

 _'I know that voice,'_  thought the speedster's foggy mind.

The voice spoke again and, as the seconds passed, the noises turned into barely distinguishable syllables before finally becoming the last world Barry thought he would hear from his spooky companion.

"Help-" called out the voice again, as Barry blinked another time and the world spun around him.

In a blink of an eye, an expression that felt way more literal than it should be in that particular situation, Barry found himself back in the medical bay. But, this time around, it was with a few noticeable differences.

To the hero's immense relief, the agony was mostly gone when he finally reconnected with his body and into the world of the living. He found himself lying down on his side in a similar position he was in his last dream; watching the medication cabinet in the back of the room with a limited view of Caitlin's back. Her loose curly brown hair was delicately falling over her shoulders and her white medical blouse.

"Cait?" Weakly rasped the speedster.

His whisper got lost on his interlocutor who, instead of turning around, leaned forward over her computer and typed a few sentences, unaware of the changes in her patient's condition.

After faintly scraping his throat, another noise that got missed by the doctor, Barry forced his sensitive body to change position and settle on his back. He sure was grateful to be able to do so without the unbearable sensations he felt earlier during the attack and during that weird, unexplained dream. The bed creaking underneath his shifting weight alerted the metahuman who turned her head around and instantly widened her smile.

"Barry," she let out as she dug her heels on the concrete ground and turned around. "How do you feel?"

"What happened?" He asked instead of answering. Pushing his palms on the mattress, he manoeuvred himself into a half-seated position to get a better view around, which allowed him to notice the impressive pile of empty IV bags lying on the table near the computer.

"You passed out," explained Caitlin who approached the bed and reached out for the man's closest wrist with her fingers without hesitation to feel the regular and strong pulsations underneath, "it's still a little weak."

Barry scoffed. "I already figured out the part about passing out. I meant; why? What happened after the shadow touched me? Did you capture him? What did you do with him?"

That sure was a mouthful of questions that needed to be answered, it was no surprise Caitlin didn't guess and answered them all from a two words interrogation.

"You passed out from exhaustion Barry; your glucose levels were pretty low. They still are. It's not surprising considering how you've barely been eating in the last week since it happened," said Caitlin with a slight pause and hesitation on the pronunciation of the next-to-last word; it. In an attempt to conceal the real reason behind the small break, she moistened her lips before speaking again. "It was bound to happen soon or later."

Barry frowned at this unsatisfying answer. "The shadow attacked me. He came at me and touched my shoulder, that's why I passed out. I was fine, mostly, before he appeared," he protested.

There was no denying he hadn't taken care of himself, and the nights had been pretty short and restless. But passing out because of it? That didn't sound right, especially since it happened right after the shadow made contact.

Biting her lip, Caitlin turned around and returned to the computer. Pushing a lock of brunette hair behind her ears, she changed the present tab to another one filled with countless medical data and test results to confirm her findings one last time before delivering them.

"Look," she said, straightening herself and turning around once more. "I did the tests while you were out and there was nothing in your scans or in your blood to indicate any external cause to what happened to you."

"What about the heat? What about my powers? It can't be a coincidence," argued back the speedster.

"Your temperature was normal by the time I got to you," said the doctor who approached the bed again and put the back of her hand against her patient's forehead. "What about now? How do you feel?"

"I feel good now," whispered Barry, looking in the distance before raising his eyes to meet his friends' after her hand was removed. "What happened? I remember feeling like I was burning from the inside out and feeling weak in the knees. I think Iris called my n-"

Suddenly remembering his wife, Barry exhaled and twisted his upper body to make a fast scan of the room while ignoring the instant tension that built his back at the movement.

"Where's Iris? Is sh-"

"She's fine, the shadow didn't hurt her," softly answered the doctor, interrupting her friend, before hesitating again. "Our mysterious visitor isn't going to be a problem anymore."

Closing his eyes in relief, Barry allowed the sudden tension to leave his body, for now, and gratefully welcomed the slight shaking in his body that was indicating the decrease of adrenaline in his system. Slowly and taking a moment to gather his thoughts, Barry pushed himself in a more seated and comfortable position. That's only then that his mind finally truly registered the last part of the sentence and an unexplained lump formed in his throat.

"What happened? What happened with the shadow?" He asked, nervously. Why was he worried when it sounded like the source of their problem was not going to bother them anymore?

"I think we might've accidentally destroyed him," admitted Killer Frost's host before biting her lip again.

"How?" As he was speaking up, Barry pushed the sheet away and moved his legs over the edge of the bed.

"Easy there, don't get up too fast," gently said Caitlin while helping her friend to sit on the edge with his feet dangling in the air.

Without trying to get off the bed entirely, Barry's head turned to a 45-degree angle from his initial position to silently stare at the doctor. He was still waiting for the answer to his earlier question. Since avoiding the subject wasn't going to work, Caitlin sighed in defeat and put her hands in the white coat's pockets.

"When Iris saw what was happening, with you falling on the ground and the shadow standing over you, she sent a distress signal on her phone. Nora was the first to arrive, but also the first to get thrown to the wall this time. Hearing the commotion, I grabbed the cold gun that was still lying close-" she said, pointing at the weapon on the table.

"It didn't stop it for long last time," noted Barry, whose brain was working fast to try and guess how his team destroyed their enemy before hearing the answer.

Agreeing, Caitlin nodded and took advantage of the pause to reposition herself right in front of her friend so he wouldn't have to twist his neck to see her. "But at least it got it off of me the last time and made it leave. So, I figured it was better than nothing."

It was Barry's time to nod before allowing his friend to continue.

"Well, as you guessed, I fired on that thing before it could attack Nora again. It froze on the spot, yet again... You okay?" She interrupted herself and took her hands out of her pockets at the sight of Barry frowning and seemingly lost in his thoughts, his glance slightly off his interlocutor's face.

"Barry?" She tried again.

The speedster slowly blinked and looked back at her. "Hmm, what?"

"Are you okay?"

"Yeah, it's just... something's not right here. Something doesn't add up; why did it throw you and Nora across the room and just touched me? Why didn't it send me flying too?"

Caitlin shrugged. "I don't know, but it's gone now. During the short instant when it was frozen up, Nora did a lightning throw at that shadow and it just fell apart. It screamed and disintegrated; there was nothing left of it."

Slightly lowering his head, Barry deposited his chin on his raised right hand, thinking out loud. "Could it still be alive? It wasn't made of anything solid. You said it yourself, there was nothing to collect, and there was no corpse. Is it possible he just, somehow, teleported somewhere else?"

Reaching forward, Caitlin grabbed Barry's arm to attract his attention back on her. "It's over, why are you overthinking it? Just stop fighting this."

Extracting himself from her grip, Barry jumped to the ground, grunting at the slight tension it caused in his back, and moved to the back of the room to gather his thoughts. Ok, this was going to sound crazy, but here came nothing.

"I know how it's going to sound, but I have a feeling this thing was trying to send me a message. When it touched me-"

To illustrate his words, Barry touched his shoulder at the same spot he got grabbed by the intruder.

"-and I passed out, I had this, I don't know, dream or vision. I was lying here in the medical bay, feeling worse than I did when I first woke up last week, and you were treating me. I think it might've been some memories from when Cicada stabbed me and you guys took me back." Rambled the speedster.

"Okay..." Caitlin trailed off; confusion written all over her face.

"Cisco was talking to me; I had a feeling he was right there in the room with us at the moment. And I think this shadow was asking for help. What if we were wrong about it, what if it wants to help Cisco?" He suggested before instantly seeing the way the doctor's face saddened and her curious, yet confused, eyes darkened with sadness.

"That thing tried to kill me, remember? Just like he sent Nora flying earlier, or sent you mental waves of pain. That thing could've killed us all, starting with you, we were lucky there were people close the last two times it attacked you. And Cisco's… he's..." she stopped. What was the point? It was like repeating a broken cassette at that point.

"Cisco was so close in my dream; it was like he was in the room with us, he was-"

"Barry, I'm sorry, but he is gone. It was just a dream, nothing else. It's not abnormal to have this kind of dreams after what unfolded. I'm sorry Barry. It can't be real, not with how confused and blurry it was."

Before the speedster could protest, a shiver passed in his back and goose bumps appeared on his arms accompanied by a familiar sensation running through his veins. Could it be?

"I think Nora's back," he announced in perfect synchronicity with the arrival of purple and yellow flashes of lightning coming from the other side of the door's window, which cracked a smile on his lips. He felt it, he felt the girl's Speed-Force for one microsecond before she arrived, just like he could feel a faint pulse of electricity coursing through his veins. There was the silver lining of the day, "it looks like my powers might be starting to come back," he commented with a smile.

"That's great news," approved Caitlin, also smiling, before adopting a more serious look and pointing at the door with her head. "Nora left for Earth 19, to try and find Gypsy after you passed out. She's back, we should go see what she has to say."

Finishing her sentence, the doctor moved to the door with her friend who followed her for the first three or so steps, before hesitating as he reached the newly open door. Barry was about to know if Cisco was somewhere out there, but the real question was; was he ready to accept the truth?

A deep breath and tremors going from head to toes were the extra pushes he needed to gather enough courage to step out of the room and walk into the cortex where the team was having an improvised meeting composed of not only Killer Frost's host and Barry's daughter, but also Ralph and Iris.

"Hey," he greeted, waving at his team.

The hero shivered a tad and almost gasped when he thought he saw Cisco standing in the corner of the room, next to the suit, but it only took one blink to realize Vibe wasn't there. Okay, maybe he wasn't ready for the truth.

Widening her lips and softening her features, Iris walked right to her husband to gently grab his left arm and drew him closer to her. "Hey, how are you feeling?" She inquired softly.

"I'm okay, I am," he automatically answered, without taking the time to consider his condition, before turning his attention toward his daughter. "What's the news? Did you find Gypsy?"

"I... did." Carefully pronounced Nora who threw uncertain glances at the team, confirming ahead of her words the information she was about to share regarding her little trip on Earth 19.

"And?" Asked her dad, inviting her to continue despite the cold feeling in his guts.

Sighing, Nora deposit on the desk the shredded pieces of the Vibe's suit she took with her, carefully looking down at it as she answered. "Gypsy didn't sense anything."

The silence that followed was deafening.

"What about-" started Barry, only to get interrupted by his daughter.

"There was nothing, he's nowhere in the multiverse. He's gone, dad. Cisco's gone."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Leave a comment and, as I said, get ready to know, very very soon, what's happening with all the characters. I actually planted an important clue right here; you might hit yourself when you'll come back later after realizing what that was.


	7. Relapse

Feeling that his strengths were suddenly leaving his still recuperating muscles, Barry gripped the main desk to stay upright. It wasn't right. Cisco couldn't be gone, Gypsy was mistaken. Because, if he was, what about the voices Barry had been hearing? What about the visions? The hero could feel it. It was his friend. Vibe was asking for help. And, what about this shadow that suddenly started appearing right after the incident? It couldn't be a coincidence; it had to be related to Cisco's disappearance. Yeah, the hero was missing and wounded, but nothing more; Barry needed to believe that.

"No, Cisco got transported into another dimension. The shadow took him. It was an accident. He needs help. He needs me. I have to find them, I-" the speedster rambled incomprehensible, unable to look up from the furniture that was keeping him upright.

"Dad?" Worriedly asked Nora, hesitantly walking closer to her father and stopping a few feet before reaching him, uncertain of her next action. "I'm sorry, I tried."

Advancing faster and without stopping, Iris passed right by her daughter, brushing her shoulder on the way, before joining her husband's side. "Honey, are you're okay?"

He wasn't, obviously, considering his words and how his whole being was starting to shake.

 _Thank you_ , mouthed Iris to Ralph when the stretching hero handed her a warm, black blanket.

Where the hell did that thing come from? Too shaky, in every sense of the word, to question the object's apparition, Barry gracefully accepted the additional heat on his shoulders and the two gentle pairs of hands that lowered him down on the chair. Allowing his friends to take control of the situation and take care of his crumbling and broken being, Barry closed his eyes and let his head fall into his waiting hands.

"You have to stop fighting Barry, it's not always up to you to save everyone," said Ralph, "you should take a break, Rookie. You really should take a break; we'll take care of the town for you."

Suppressing a sob, Barry nodded. What else was there to do? They were right; every member of his team was; he needed to stop fighting.

*****FLASHFLASHFLASH*****

"Are you sure you'll be okay?" Gently asked Iris with her hands on her husband's cheeks and her glance locked in his.

"I will be if you join me soon enough," answered back Barry, teasing and smiling through the pain while ignoring his distressed stomach struggling to deal with the ultimate realization that he genuinely failed at saving his best friend.

Moving a few inches closer, the hero managed to get close enough to share an intimate kiss with his soulmate.

"I won't be long, I promise," Iris assured after she broke contact and moved away, handing the interdimensional extrapolator over to the hero.

"See you later," he said as the young reporter walked a few steps back and gave to Barry all the space he would need to open a breach.

Maybe his team was right; maybe he needed to stop fighting his past and his guilt. Taking a break for a few days, or more, from all of this might be what he truly needed to move on from his hallucinations. For the moment, the plan was to take it easy at the loft and take it one step, one day, at the time and see where this was going to lead him. After one last glance back, Barry directed the device toward the central portion of the breach room and opened a portal.

Stepping outside of it, the hero found himself back in his home, and he instantly took a deep breath to try to clear his mind from everything that went wrong in his world during the last week or so. It was midday, and the soft rays of the sun were shining brightly inside the living room. It was just so peaceful. A gentle breeze was the only thing missing to make all of this even more calming. The man who used to protect Central City would've preferred not to be alone at the moment, but he would need to settle in on his own for now while his wife was taking care of something else before coming back.

Of course, the universe wasn't going to cooperate with the CSI. As soon as his worn up body, both physically and mentally, slumped on the comfortable brown sofa, a familiar shivered passed in his spine and the feeling of being observed washed his entire being. Before Barry had the chance to spin his head around to scan the room, Cisco's voice came back to haunt him, again.

"Barry, don't give up. Don't stop fighting," whispered the voice.

It was with his breathing getting caught in his throat that Barry swiftly twisted his neck around, strongly enough to hurt, to try and get a glimpse of his deceased friend who was standing right behind. Surprisingly, it wasn't despair nor grief that popped into his mind, but a mix of anger and irritation.

Jumping to his feet, and tensed all over his body, Barry turned around to face the apparition.

"Why aren't you leaving me alone? What do you want? Are you even real?"

"Don't stop fighting," blankly said the apparition on the same mechanical, yet slightly sad, tone. It was with the same tired voice than before that Cisco's mysterious apparition continued with similar words; "don't give up on me, man."

While unconsciously clenching his fists, Barry walked around the furniture to get closer and raise his tone of voice a bit more with every passing sentence, "why are you haunting me? I'm sorry I couldn't save you, but you need to leave now. You need to leave me alone!"

When the CSI moved around and changed his position toward Vibe, he noticed how, once again, his dead friend's glance didn't follow. Instead, Cisco was left staring at a spot just slightly left of the Scarlet Speedster, a place where there was nothing to see. Why was it so hard for ghosts, or hallucinations, whatever the hell it was, to have the decency to keep looking at their interlocutor?

It wasn't enough that Cisco was haunting him, he didn't even have the respect to look at him before speaking, "I'm sorry, Barry, but you can't leave me."

Was this mysterious apparition's only goal to taunt his victim?

"Enough, you gotta leave. NOW!" Shouted Barry, as he felt rage taking him over and allowed flashes of yellow lightning to sparkle all around his left arm. He couldn't run, not yet, but he could still graze the surface of his connection with the Speed-Force.

Without thinking, Barry took his arm far behind him, in order to make his momentum, before throwing his punch forward at full strength. Just as Barry should've expected, if he was thinking clearly, his attack passed right through the apparition and, swinging in the non-corporeal presence almost caused the young man to lose his balance. The speedster stumbled and completely passed right through his dead friend before the CSI awkwardly found back his balance. By the time he managed to straighten himself up and turned around, it was to realize that Cisco was gone. The ghost had disappeared again, just like it did the last time Barry reached out for contact.

"Just, leave me alone," he whispered to the universe, one last time as he felt his energy leaving at the same speed than his words.

By the time the last syllable left Barry's lips, all anger was gone. In the next instant, his legs buckled underneath him and the defeated hero's knees silently hit the ground. The pain from the hard contact with the ground barely registered in his brain at that point as all he had the strength to do was stay down, alone and sobbing. It was in that position that his wife found him more than an hour later and when Iris saw him, she chose not to say a thing and silently knelt next to him. Gently, she wrapped her arms around her husband and took him closer, letting him cry against her for what felt like forever before whispering gently to his ears:

"It's gonna be okay, everything is going to be okay," she gently told him, over and over again 'till the man finally calmed down and relaxed.

The road to recovery was going to be long and not without a few bumps.

The few following days unfolded slowly for the shaken man who was jumpy every time a sudden movement or silhouette would manifest itself on the corner of his eyes as if he was half expecting to see another apparition staring creepily back at him if he was to turn around. Every single time that happened, after Barry made sure he was in the clear, he sighed and went back to do whatever he had been doing before being jostled while pretending nothing happened. Yielding to the man's silent wish, any witness to these events acted like they didn't see a thing.

That pattern went on for days, and the exact numbers of incidents got lost on Iris who would stay at his side for most of the time and was trying her best to keep her absences as few and briefs as possible. Many members of the team came to visit and try to lift their teammate's spirit during this tough time; they made sure Barry never was alone and supported the hero every single step of the way.

Slowly, but surely, his condition seemed to improve as Barry started to accept the fact his friend was truly gone, and the visions started to go away. By the end of the week, almost half a month had passed since that fateful day in the forest.

Possibly, his friends might have been right. He just needed to calm down and stop fighting this and stop fighting them to move on finally. It would be a lie to say it wasn't still hurting like hell to think about how he let his friend down and how Cisco was dead because of him, but he had no choice but to move on from this.

But if Vibe was gone, why was that strange feeling still agitating his stomach and messing with his mind? Hard to tell if that was simply because of his guilt or if it was his hero's instinct, for whatever it was worth.

The speedster's head popped up, his fists clenched suddenly, and his heart picked up the pace at a surprising silhouette approaching the side of the couch on which he had been seated for the last hour or so. His breath caught in his throat as he swiftly jumped to his feet and turned his body around, only to sigh in relief when he instantly recognized his daughter.

"You scared me," he said, not that it wasn't obvious already with his fast breathing and his hand over his speeding heart, "I didn't hear you come in."

Nora winced in sympathy.

"I'm sorry, I didn't mean to frighten you. How are you today? No more hallucinations?" She asked while approaching her father with her arms wide open.

Leaning forward and opening his arms, the speedster gratefully accepted the hug and allowed the young XS to lay her head down on his shoulder for a second.

"For half a second there you made me think I was having one," nervously chuckled Barry while letting go of the physical contact. "But I'm good. I haven't seen Cisco since-"

Stopping and unconsciously raising his right hand into the air, the speedster started to mentally recall the events of the last couple of days and count them on his fingers. This last week had been pretty much a blur; it was easy to lose the sense of time while staying at home all day for an extended period.

"Last time I had one was the day before Ralph last came to visit, so that was just over three days ago," he finally said.

His answer caused Nora to widely smile as she was unbuttoning her long brown coat before taking it off.

"That's great to hear, truly," she declared while throwing her coat on the couch, "I hope dinner's almost ready; I'm starving."

Dinner? What din-

Oh, wait. Barry looked down at his watch and slightly cursed under his breath, was it already this late? Was it today that he was supposed to make dinner? He somehow managed not only to forget it was the night he promised to cook for his whole family but he also totally didn't see the hours flying right by him today.

"I'm sorry, I guess the day got away from me," he badly apologized while desperately looking around and feeling electricity building up in his veins. He still couldn't speed his way around, for some unknown reason Caitlin was still working to figure out, but at least he still had few slight bursts of Speed-Force, here and there.

"It's okay. We can go grab some Big Belly Burger," hurriedly added the young speedster upon seeing the guilty face of the CSI, "I came here to see you, not eat a five-star gourmet. Even if it would've been nice," she added after a quick pause, winking.

"Come on," she said, taking place on the sofa and inviting Barry to join her by gently patting the furniture, "you must be going crazy to stay here all day long, aren't you?"

Hello, understatement of the day. Barry nodded; he sure was sick and tired of these four walls.

"I've been thinking," swiftly continued XS before the speedster had the chance to add anything, "we could do a little family day out somewhere tomorrow since you're feeling better."

"I'll be down for it," approved Barry, sitting on the couch arm and leaving only his daughter's coat between him and her, "do you have any suggestion?"

"I thought we could go see a movie, or what about a trail ride? I know a place," she excitedly proposed, causing her father to chuckle.

Trail ride, as in horse riding? Really? That's one activity Barry hadn't done in forever; last and only time was with his parents when he was about eight or nine years old.

"Are you serious?"

"Sure! I know a great place not too far we could go that just opened and that's still going to exist in my future; I went a few times when I was younger. In my time they have this stubborn old mare called Peps Lucky Rose who's a real dragon to ride-" started to say the young speedster with contagious enthusiasm.

Her words were lost on the older CSI when his ears started buzzing, and the heat cranked up almost instantly, alongside the pain in his back.

 _No, no, no... not again,_  he thought, tensing up all over. He was healed, and the shadow was gone forever, it couldn't be happening.

"Barry," growled a deep eerie voice, a curiously familiar voice.

Just as expected, when the speedster dared to glance behind his daughter, he saw it, he saw the shadow floating ominously in the room. Wait. Right behind the apparition; it wasn't the loft living room anymore, it was S.T.A.R. Lab. More precisely, it was the room and the trap they used to trap the Reverse Flash years ago, or tried to catch him was even more accurate. The dangerous and unknown creature was hovering in the middle of it, looking trapped.

 _Do I know you? I feel like I do_ , wanted to ask the speedster, but a voice seemingly from far, far away stole his attention the question could come out.

"Dad? Dad!" Loudly asked the voice of Nora West-Allen before her worried face suddenly appeared in front of his eyes and caused the whole scene to swiftly dissipate into thin air which jostled the Flash right back into reality.

"Wh't-" mumbled Barry, gasping and digging deep with his nails into the couch's fabric.

"Did you see something?" She slowly asked, hesitant, and scared.

"No," answered back her father, a tad too quickly. "I didn't see anything, I just got lost in my thoughts," he lied. Why did he lie? To stop XS from worrying? Barry couldn't tell, but he just knew his instincts were telling him to do it.

"Tomorrow's should be fine. We can go tomorrow afternoon," added Barry, going back into the earlier conversation like nothing happen.

It was taking him all his will to stay focused on his daughter's face and not look at the spot where the apparition was. The shadow was dead. It was gone. Was that a new hallucination? There was no way his friends would've captured it and pretend it wasn't alive, right?

If that was a certainty, why was that thought roaming in his head all evening long and followed him in his bed, forcing him to turn around restlessly till he finally surrendered to the darkness? He needed to ask some questions to his friend tomorrow.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> uh ooohhhh! It was too easy to be true, right?
> 
> Are you guys still into the story? Want more? Any of you want to make one last guest about what's happening to Barry ? ;)


	8. Tumbling down

He was drowning.

Everything was so bright.

And, he was drowning!

Barry desperately tried to crack open his eyes, but the light was burning and blinding them savagely with such strength that, as far as the speedster was concerned, he might've well been staring straight at the sun during a walk in the middle of the desert. The hero's chest was severely compressed, and his airways were closing fast, and tight, which was preventing any air from entering or leaving. Who put a damn elephant on his chest anyway? Something, or someone, was squeezing him to death and the hero was helpless to escape! Or, that's how he felt at this instant, no matter how close or far away from the truth that was. And why did he feel like there was water filling his lungs?

Maybe if he could sit down and cough everything out, he would be okay. That was his only thought and only hope. At least, the only one that was overwhelming the hero's mind. Barry's whole body tensed up between two shorts and uneven gasps before he tried to straighten up, but hands pushed down firmly on whatever he was lying down.

No! They were killing him!

There was no escaping, and his surroundings were still way too bright to allow the defeated hero to identify his attackers. Barry's shallow breaths were becoming shorter and faster by the second and the faint level of consciousness he had was drifting away. He was covered with sweat all over his burning hot body and, yeah, he still couldn't breathe! Every breath he took sounded like it was coming straight from a high pitched and defective whistle and his panic was rising exponentially. Barry was in desperate need to shout and scream his frenzied request to be set free, but he was utterly powerless.

Iris's husband didn't even have enough energy, nor oxygen, to fight for his life; there was no way he was going to able to push away the people keeping him hostage. His feeble kicks only managed to hit the air and darkness slowly enveloped him once more.

"NO!" Shouted Barry, sitting up instantly on his bed, drenched in sweat and breathing heavily.

His bare chest was heaving and his hands that were pushing behind his back and against the soft mattress underneath him were the only thing keeping him from falling back again. His confused eyes darted around in panic; where was he? Where were his attackers? When it hit him that he was back in his loft and that he could breathe again, an indescribable feeling of relief washed over him. It was a dream. He was safe. And, the most important thing of all; he could get the precious gas into his lungs again. Oh, thank God for that fact. Barry might be on the edge of hyperventilating, but that was sure as hell better than drowning.

Everything in that dream just felt so real, just like the one he had of himself in the medical bay after the shadow touched him. But, at least, this time Cisco didn't haunt him in his last delusion, that had to be a bright side.

First thing first; the hero needed to calm down and force his panicked body out of his fight or flee mode. To achieve his goal, he slowly and deeply inhaled and exhaled a few times with his eyes staying close to concentrate even more on his breathing pattern.

Everything was okay; he was back in his home, and his wife was peacefully sleeping next to him in the silent night that was only disturbed by the sound of the winds faintly whistling through the partly opened window. Under the cover of darkness that was preceding the arrival of the dawn, tears silently started to cascade down the hero's already wet cheeks; just when he thought he was finally getting back to normal; he was crashing down again. First, the visions came back, worse than before, and now the nightmares were rushing back at full strength.

He was never going to get better. He was never going to be alright again.

That last thought crushed his soul like a thousand mountains falling on him. Barry's head helplessly fell into his hands, and his entire being started to shake under the relentless wail that followed. What was wrong with him? He couldn't do this, not anymore. He couldn't keep living like that.

For just a fraction of a second, only one, which was long enough to send shivers down his spine, the most terrifying thought crossed his mind. The image of the most unthinkable gestures almost took over his frantic mind, but he chased it away instantly. No, he couldn't end all of his pain, but neither could he keep going like this, what was the third option?

The increased hissing of the wind forced Barry to open his eyes again and redirect his attention back to the window; was it the weather picking up? No, it wasn't. The whispering slowly turned into words, and all of them were emanating from somewhere near the feet of the bed.

"Help me, Barry," whistled the wind for a few more seconds until the silence filled the room all over again.

Closing his eyes once more, Barry summoned the energy to clear his mind just enough to think about his next step. In the maze that was his brain right now, there was only one sure thing; he had to know. Flash had to find out what was up and what was down. Was there a remote chance the shadow was still alive and his friends managed to capture it during the last week where he was away from the lab? If that was so, why would they all stay quiet on the issue? They either were lying, or it was just another, weirdly specific, creation of his mind.

He just needed to find which one it was. If his friend did hide this from him, he had to find out why.

Quietly, he pushed down the sheet off his legs and slid out of bed, only stopping for an instant to make sure he wasn't waking his wife up. A groan coming from the side of the bed attracted his attention and caused him to hold his breath for a second. Except for his head that slightly turned around, he didn't dare to move a muscle as he was waiting and glancing at Iris to make sure she was still asleep.

"I'll be back soon, I just need to know the truth," he whispered before getting up and slowly leaving while carefully minimizing the floor creaking under his foot on the way out.

By the time the hero made it to S.T.A.R. Labs, thanks to the bus, it was almost 7 am, meaning there probably was a person or two already there to answer his questions. Part of the speedster almost wished he wasn't going to run to anyone, so he could sneak into the force field room and check for himself, but if the shadow was alive and had been put there in secret, there probably was a damn good reason why nobody told him. Plus, why risk being affected by that thing again?

As he was walking into the elevator, Barry found himself face to face with Killer Frost's host.

"Hey," he greeted, "you slept downstairs again I'm guessing, how are you?" He inquired while leaning forward to press the button of the cortex' level without thinking that Caitlin had probably already pushed it already. Call it reflexes.

"You're going to be alright, Barry," answered back the doctor. For some inexplicable reason, her voice sounded wholly worn out.

"Hey, you okay?" Gently inquired the CSI as he turned around to face her. Damn, she looked tired; her eyes were reddened like she'd been crying and deep dark circles were all around her eyes, "what's wrong?"

Instead of answering, Caitlin just looked at an invisible spot just over Barry's left shoulder and ran her right hand over her runny nose before rubbing it off against her white lab coat.

"You can't give up," she softly said while repeating the same motion she just did. Her sniffing barely covered the sound of the elevator beeping as it finally reached out the requested facility level. Barry's stomach twisted in worry.

"Hey, hey. What's wrong, Cait?"

Extending his arm forward, with the attention to reach out and grab his friend's shoulder, Barry gasped when his arm passed right through her. What the hell? In the next second, Caitlin disappeared into thin air.

"Oh God," he whispered. Not another type of vision, he had enough of that with Cisco. And since Caitlin was alive, it couldn't be a ghost this time., so much for that theory.

Unless…

It was like a cold shower hit his entire being and Barry gasped loudly. In the next instant, the elevator's door opened up and revealed his daughter who was standing there, sadly smiling at him and struggling to keep her emotions inside.

"Hey, how are you holding up?" Gently asked the young speedster.

"Nora, I think something's really wrong with me," he stated, feeling his heart beating up faster.

The way his daughter didn't change her expression, nor did she look in his eyes while having a semi-blank expression on her face, wasn't helping to calm Flash down.

"We'll figure it out, it's going to be alright," his daughter assured him.

"Nora, listen to me-"

Before Barry could finish speaking, his daughter dissipated like a mirage into thin air in the same way the doctor did an instant before. Alright, so either the girls both became ghost overnight, a thought that turned Barry's blood into ice, or there was definitely something wrong with him.

One step forward. Then, two steps ahead. After walking the third one, as if the hero was hit by a sudden faintness, Barry stumbled and caught himself on the wall, unhearing the loud thump sound from the hit against it. No, he wasn't okay in any way. First thing first, he needed to take just a few deep breaths to find back his composure just before a voice, that sounded like it was coming from the cortex, caught his attention.

"Dad? Dad, is that you?"

Nora. Hopefully, it was the real Nora this time. Finding back his balance, and swallowing his fears, Barry started striding quickly in the direction of her room where he found his daughter just at the entry.

"Hey, I thought I heard you," she greeted him.

Instead of looking at her, her dad only had eyes for the woman behind XS; Caitlin. So, she wasn't a ghost either.

"You were right; something's wrong with me, and I need help," he requested with shaking lips, "I think I might be losing my mind-"

"-and then I heard you guys calling for you," finished retelling Barry to the worried crowd a few instants later as he was standing and leaning against the back of the chair placed in front of the computers. His daughter and Killer Frost's host were looking at him from the other side of the table, and both of them were unsure what do say.

"I'm sorry, Barry," apologized Caitlin, looking down at her black jacket and dark shirt underneath to avoid eye contact for a second before looking up again. "Maybe I shouldn't have dismissed your issues so fast before letting you back home."

While pushing his hands against the back of the chair, Barry straightened himself up and got back at the same height than the two other people in the room.

"What about the shadow? Is it still alive?" He asked firmly.

The hesitation and guilty looks shared by the two women was all the answer he needed; after a moment, Nora shrugged.

"Yeah. I'm sorry, dad; it reappeared after you've already left the lab and we managed to trap him."

Barry frowned at the confirmation of his suspicions; "why didn't you guys tell me about this? What are you planning to do with him... it?"

Him, or it; whatever that thing was. Was the Flash such a liability now that his whole team somehow decided his opinion wasn't needed anymore? His lips twitched, but it was the only physical sign of his inner struggles to keep his neutral expression on and stay quiet.

Caitlin winced sympathetically, "we were worried that discussing this with you would worsen your state while you seemed to be getting so much better," she badly tried to explain. After a quick pause, during which she saw Barry tensing and about to add something, she continued, "but we were planning on discussing his fate with you once you would be recovered. I swear."

"Maybe he's the reason you're still having issues," theorized Nora, turning around and looking at the exit of the room, on the verge of losing herself in her thoughts, but her theory got quickly dismissed.

"No, I don't think so," assured Caitlin, shaking her head slightly. "It didn't appear to be a connection at first."

"No matter whether or not he's making me see ghosts, that thing is still asking for my help. I have to talk to it."

Distinct looks of disapproval about his request came from all around, not that Barry expected anything else if he was to be honest with himself.

"Hum... not a good idea, dad. That thing tried to kill you. It tried to kill us, and it's manipulating you in the hope you'll free it. It's only trying to save itself, don't forget that," said Nora.

"She's right," approved Caitlin as she started to walk around the cortex's table to get close enough to her friend to gently touch Barry's left arm, "I might have a treatment we can try. You can go to the med bay; I'll join you in a minute. We can discuss the Shadow's fate, all of us together after this is taken care of."

For half a second, Barry's mouth opened to protest, but he closed it again. He was too tired to protest.

"Alright," he quickly yielded, causing Caitlin to let go of his arm before Barry's body moved away and toward the too familiar medical bay. He just needed to get this done. On his way, he didn't notice the ominous look getting thrown at him by the doctor with a mysterious smile cracking on her lips.

*****FLASHFLASHFLASH*****

Caitlin imperceptibly shook her head as she entered the medical lab and saw that the familiar form sitting on a chair in the middle of the room hadn't moved a single muscle since the last time she's been there. What was left to say that she hadn't already expressed? There wasn't much left, so she just silently slid inside and walked around the chair and bed to go straight to her computer to double check the readings displayed all over the device's screen. Behind her, she heard the chair creaking slightly, but stayed focused on her task ahead and barely suppressed the long sigh that was struggling to get out. It wasn't good.

If she could, if she was all alone, Caitlin might've crashed down on the other mildly uncomfortable seat, but she wasn't allowed to do that, not while there was a witness. If anyone were to see her break down, it would crush all their faint hopes in an instant.

"That bad?" Asked the masculine voice behind her.

Damn, the team knew her too well. She couldn't hide the way her shoulders were slightly slumped forward, and she couldn't stop the suspicions from rising at her abnormally quiet attitude. Her efforts to make herself as small as possible just confirmed what she was trying to keep secret. Biting her lips, she turned around to face her friend.

"There's still hope," she affirmed, as strongly as possible, which wasn't much and surely wasn't fooling her interlocutor who just lowered his head and harshly rubbed his forehead, failing at hiding his desperation.

"What's wrong?" Reiterated the young man who was still looking down at the bed in front of him.

Caitlin sighed and looked away for half a second, regaining her composure and unconsciously tangling her fingers together.

"It's like his body just stopped fighting like he just decided to lay down and give up, I don't know why."

"It's all my fault; I'm the reason he came into the forest in the first place. I should've protected him harder."

"You got stabbed by Cicada and almost died, what more do you think you could've done?" She gently, yet firmly stated, even if she already knew deep down there was no stopping the guilt train, "come on, you need to get some rest," she added, walking behind her friend and gently putting her hands on his shoulders.

With one swift movement, the man freed himself with a groan. "I gotta stay here, I can't leave...not yet, not 'til I know he's not-"

"I will call you if there are any changes. Come on, Cisco, you got to nap for at least an hour-long or so," requested the doctor again, while her glance slowly moved away from the wounded breacher with his arm in a sling and focused on the sleeping form. Right there, on the bed, was the unconscious Barry Allen.

**To Be Continued... (see note below)**

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Dah dah dahhhh! Plotwist! Hope you guys like it, let me know what you thought and if you saw it coming
> 
> Letting you also know that, for the past few weeks, I've started to really lose my writing motivation, been feeling bad for a while and went behind in the schedule, especially after seeing how many people just decided to drop to story for some reason. Wish I knew what I've done wrong :( I have the whole plan for the rest of the story, but nothing written after this point, so it will take at least 2 weeks before a new chapter, maybe more.
> 
> Are you guys still interested in the ending?


	9. End of the line

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello, I'm bacckkkk! Sorry for the 2 weeks turns 2 months, but I wasn't 100% sure if I was going to finish that story and, with time, I started to wonder if anyone was still following. So, here we go, giving a shot to see if anyone's still here and waiting!

_Real world:_

Lying unconscious, and covered with sweet, on the medical bed was none other than the Flash himself. The hero, whose skin was blushing with fever, was struggling with every shallow and uneven breath that was threatening, each one of them, to be the last one Barry would ever take. The nasal cannula was barely doing a thing to ease the constant battle, and all the equipment was ready at all time to intubate if it was needed. Hopefully, it wouldn't come to that, but the odds weren't in the speedster's favor.

Artificial life support might very well be the only option remaining in a very near future if things were to continue in the same direction, despite the doctor's tremendous efforts.

Sensors were connected to both sides of the speedsters' head, and they were sending live and non-stop data to the computers while an IV needle was inserted in the back of the hero's right hand. Lying on the desk, near the computer, was an impressive pile of empty fluid bags to try bringing all the needed nutrients and medicament into the hero's body even if, sadly, it wasn't doing much to keep the hero's condition from worsening.

"Are you sure he's not gonna fall into a coma again?" Worriedly inquired Cisco while his only free hand gently reached out for his friend's arm.

"No, he's not going to," assured the doctor, as she delicately walked around the chair and took place on the chair next to her friend as she felt their chat was going to take longer than anticipated. Plus, there was no denying her exhaustion, both mentally and physically.

 _He's not there, yet_ , wanted to add Caitlin, emphasizing on the last word in her mind, but choosing to keep that part inside before continuing: "his brain activity is way too high for someone who's about to slip into a coma, hell even from someone asleep. If I only had the test results to analyze and I didn't have access to my patient, I would say these are the readings of a person who's awake," she added while looking from a distance at the computer displaying the sensors' results.

"Why did he get so much worse in the last few hours or so?" Whispered Cisco under his breath.

This battle hasn't been easy; the whole team knew it would be hard for Barry to come on top again, but they still had faith that their friend would find a way to overcome it. At least, they used to 'til everything started to change in the last few hours, and now it was just getting harder and harder to hang on to hope.

"It's like his entire immune system decided to stop combatting all together, almost like it does not perceive the threat."

"What about his Speedforce? Why isn't it fighting back?"

As she answered, Caitlin slightly shook her head, "it's still pretty much dormant for some reason; it allowed the fluids to build up in his lungs."

After nodding silently, Cisco shifted his glance to take a good look at his doctor friend, "do you think he can hear us? Do you think he can feel the pain? Or, felt it earlier," he added, hesitating while carefully pronouncing the last part of this sentence.

Caitlin shrugged.

"Honestly? I don't know if he can hear us, but it doesn't hurt to keep trying and let him know he's not alone," she said before pausing, glancing forward and wishing the second part of the question would be forgotten. But, the way her friend kept on staring at her gave the doctor the confirmation that it wasn't.

Killer Frost's host bit her lips.

"I've got him under as much painkiller as I possibly could," she said. It wasn't an answer, and they both knew it, but Cisco accepted it by staying silent and looking back at his friend, "now it's up to him. And it's time for you to take some rest; I'll need some help cleaning the wound again in a few hours."

Yielding, Cisco took the opportunity to address his unconscious friend one last time before getting up; "you hang in there for me, you hear? We still need you around; it's not time to give up just yet. You're going to be okay."

Closing her fists, Caitlin fought to keep her emotions at bay and ignore the way a silent tear left her right eye and started falling on her cheek. By far, the worst part about being a doctor was the way everyone would look up at her like she was some miracle worker with all the knowledge in the universe. What if she couldn't fix this? Fighting in the field with Killer Frost was way easier than dealing with this kind of issues. Or, at least, that's how she felt at this instant.

No, she couldn't think like that. Barry was going to be okay. He had to.

After barely finishing to speak up, Cisco got back on his feet and started walking out, but not without turning around one last time to ensure his best friend hadn't stopped breathing the instant Vibe's foot arrived at the door. Sighing in relief, he turned around one more time and disappeared into the hallway.

Once the doctor was finally on her own in the room, she gently whispered, looking down at her patient;

"Don't throw the towel just yet, Barry; we're not gonna stop trying. Don't you dare do the same."

Far from the view of any witness, Caitlin finally allowed a few extra tears to trail down her cheeks swiftly and a quiet sob to escape her compressed throat; what would the rest of the team think if she was to fail? But, what more could she do to save the speedster? Barry had to wake up…

Hopefully, when Barry was going to wake up, not if, when he was going to, he wouldn't remember how he almost drowned when the fluids were all over his lungs. Chances are he wasn't conscious enough earlier, or that was what his team was trying to tell themselves.

*****FLASHFLASHFLASH*****

"What are my options?" Asked Barry who was half-seated on the medical bed and pitifully looking up at the doctor standing over him. Waiting at the door of the room was his newly arrived wife, who was carefully observing the scene.

To say that the doctor looked uncomfortable was an understatement judging by her evasive glance, and the way her fingers were playing nervously with each other. It was highly likely that whatever was about to get out of her mouth wasn't going to please the speedster.

"All I'm asking for you is to consider it before rejecting it," she slowly started.

 _Uh? Ok._  Barry shrugged; yeah, did he have to lose?

"I don't like the idea, but I was thinking we could try medicating your condition," finally let out the doctor.

Medicating his condition? Barry's mouth opened up instantly, intending to tell something, but he couldn't find the strength to make a single sound, so he just closed it again. He was done, done with everything at that point. Barry was too emotionally tired to do anything else other than lying down and giving up like the weight of the world was crashing down on his spine; he indeed was sick, and there was no getting better.

The man who used to save Central City was now nothing more than a worn up soldier who fought and lost his final battle and was the victim of an insurmountable wave of agony overwhelming his mind. At this instant, there was nothing that the speedster wasn't ready to do to end the pain, nothing. And that thought alone was scary.

On the bright side, if there was any in Barry's downfall, it still sounded like his friends were willing to help him. As long as Flash's friends and family didn't mind being around his fragile mind breaking apart, the hero could relax and allow them to take care of him completely. Like they said so many, countless, times, in the last few days; he had to stop fighting. That's what he was going to do. He was ready to give up now.

"I know it's not ideal, but it should help you relax and to finally get some shut-eyes, which, I have no doubts, will help you recover. Plus, It's not going to be forever, I promise, we'll get you back at 100%, with time, " tried to assure Caitlin, even if her hesitation and slightly diminished tone of voice contrasted with the meaning of her words.

Barry nodded; he had enough of it all, so what would he gain by not trying this?

"It will work with my metabolism, right?" He tiredly asked.

It was Caitlin's turn to move her head up and down to answer positively to the question, "I've been working on a little something in the last few days, and we'll have to increase and adjust the doses, but yeah, it will work."

"Alright," almost instantly said Barry without hesitation and too weak mentally to even look at his interlocutor.

Damn, he sounded so utterly depressed at the moment.

Finally deciding to stop being a simple observer, Iris walked closer to the bed and put her gentle hand on the hero's shoulder who exhaled deeply under the touch and slightly shifted his head by a few inches on the side to see who it was. Once again, he couldn't find the strength to make eye contact.

"Are you sure that's what you want to do?" Asked the hero's wife.

With a barely perceptible move, Barry acquiesced, "yeah, that's what I want to try. I'm sure."

"Alright, let's do this," agreed Iris, glancing up at the doctor. That was easy convincing.

After nodding, Caitlin moved away from the bed and headed toward the medicine cabinet to gather what would be needed. Behind her, Barry started shaking against his wife, who wrapped her arms around him in response and drew him closer, letting her contagious warm bring some comfort back into his defeated body. It was going to be ok; there was a treatment all ready to use to ease his symptoms. At that thought, The Flash felt his body filling itself with pure relieved, a sensation that was contrasting with the despair deep inside a part of his brain that he might also never get better.

When Barry first started getting these visions, two weeks ago, he surely never expected to find himself in a position where he'll need to be heavily medicated to gain back some sanity and, some sleep. Oh, sleeping. The simple thought of a full night's sleep was…

Well, there just wasn't a strong enough word to describe the sensation and anticipation.

"I can't wait to fall asleep, finally, and not make dreams like-"

The CSI's lips stayed parted and completely stopped moving while his whole being suddenly froze. Wait a minute. These dreams. That dream, in particular, the one he made before going back home. His rib cage expanded, his breathing quickened and his head twisted in the direction of the doctor who was turning around to close back on his position again.

"Wait, how did you know?" He quickly asked.

Stopping on the spot, only a few strides away from the bed, Caitlin frowned, "how did I know about what?"

"My dream, how did you know?" Firmly inquired Barry who found himself invigorated by a sudden burst of energy that allowed him to extract himself from of his wife's grasp, "there's no way you could've known," he added while maneuvering his body into a new position.

A few seconds later, his legs fall off the edge of the bed, and he found himself facing the doctor with tensed features. Unconsciously, his fingers started to grasp the mattress underneath.

"Barry, slow down, I don't follow," calmly tried to say the doctor as she put down her syringe on the portable medical table. Looking away for an instant, Caitlin shared a slightly worried glance with Iris who looked just as confused as her by this unexplained turn of events.

"When I woke up, after the shadow touched me, and I passed out, you told me that my dream was too much of a blur to be real," continued to ramble Barry, his speech speed picking up the pace a little more with every word.

"Yea...y'ah..'h..I mean, that's possible," stuttered Caitlin, uncertain and shrugging, "I don't exactly remember every word I said, but I still do-"

"What made you think that my dream was a blur?" Accused the speedster. Because, yeah, it came out as an accusation even if the sentence had been constructed as an interrogation. Barry's tone of voice clearly indicated that he already had a theory ready in the back of his mind to answer his question.

"You have to calm do-" tried to intervene Iris, reaching out to her husband who pushed her hand away at the instant it touched his arm without even looking at her. Instead, Barry's glance stayed locked on the doctor's eyes, waiting for an answer.

"I don't know, you probably told me about your dream, plus-"

"No. No, I didn't," pressed the speedster, interrupting again, "how did you know?" he asked one last time while pressing and emphasizing every single one of his words. Pushing hard against the bed, he jumped on the floor and stared straight at Caitlin like a predator about to jump on his prey.

"Who are you? Where's Caitlin? What have you done with her?" He rambled with an explicit tad of aggressivity in his voice.

It was Caitlin's turn to freeze there, moistening her lips and nervously searching for the right words, "Barry, you really, really need to calm down, you're not making any sense."

"One last chance, who are you?" He growled at her, now barely one step away from the doctor who involuntarily shivered.

"Barry, stop! What are you doing?" Almost shouted Iris right behind them, it wasn't a request.

"She's not Caitlin, can't you see? She tricked us" He growled dangerously and barely turning his head around to answer to his wife, before turning back his attention to the woman in front of him, "do you have anything to do with what's happening to me? Are you causing this?"

"Hey, you're sick," reminded Caitlin, pushing aside all the nervosity in her features and reaching out for the man's forearms, "you said so yourself. You're just confused and suffering from sleep deprivation right now, that's why you need to rest and allow me to treat you," she explained, trying to get through.

Except, the hero wasn't going to listen to any of this; "I know what I'm talking about," he said, but not without hesitation and a small pause before he started talking. In the certainty that was there a few moments ago started to crawl doubt.

"Please, Barry, listen to her, you have to calm down. You're scaring me," pleaded Iris just behind him.

"No," firmly added the hero after an extra second of hesitation where he freed himself from the doctor's touch, without even looking at his wife, "I wanna know why you don't want me to see the shadow. Why did you truly lie about capturing him?"

Instead of answering, Caitlin's features relaxed and her voice, when she spoke again, was soothing, like she was talking to a five year old child, "Everything's gonna be ok, you're gonna be just fine."

"Wh-"

A sharp sting sensation made itself feel in Barry's right shoulder and interrupted his sentence.

Inhaling sharply, and widely opening his dilated eyes, he turned his head to the side and saw the one responsible for the needle piercing his skin; Iris.

"You...too," he whispered in shock. No, his wife couldn't be with that thing pretending to be Caitlin. No, not Iris too.

Stumbling back by a few steps, Barry caught the bed to try and stay upright. His eyes were filled with betrayal.

Looking right past his wife, the one person who he thought would never stab him in the back, almost literally, he saw his daughter and Joe both appearing at the entrance and starting to analyze the scene.

Help. Barry wanted to call them out, but a weak whimper was all he managed to get before his feeble knees failed him and gravity took control of his whole being. His hands clumsily tried to grab the medical table, but it was useless, and he only managed to drag many instruments and a soon-to-be-broken syringe full of translucent liquid on his way down. The hero's body went straight to the ground not too long after that, barely avoiding to hit his head thanks to strong arms catching him at the last moment; his eyelids were flickering, and his vision was starting to fade.

The last sensation Barry registered as if all the limbs were growing numb, slowly being dragged into the darkness, was a continuous and increasing whisper;

_Barry…_

The shadow. It was trying to reach out once again; it was asking for help. But Barry was too tired, or more like too sedated, to keep questioning the last few days. So, instead, he closed his eyes and surrounded.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Mwa mwa mwa, not gonna let Barry off the hook that easily. Now, if you go back to chapter 6, you'll find again that moment with Fake Caitlin that Barry is referring to and that's the part I hinted in the comments that it wasn't making sense ;)
> 
> So...who wants the end of that story and is ready for it? Have a draft for chapter 10 that I could edit and send to my Beta to have it to you in possibly two weeks, or maybe less if you're interested :)
> 
> You can also note, if you're not following on twitter and didn't know already, that there's a Zero Hour's sequel in the work. The cover is done and the plan & synopsis are in the work, almost done. Stay tuned!


	10. I know what you are

_Inside Barry's mind:_

"Hey, stranger, how do you feel?"

Iris' soothing voice was the first sound that finally registered to Barry's ears when he started regaining consciousness, and his eyelids flickered before slowly moving out of the way to allow his eyes to see again. The very first thing he noticed was his wife, who was sitting in a chair placed right next to his position. Then, the second thing that came to Barry's mind was that he wasn't where he thought he would end up; he wasn't in the pipeline. That was a surprise considering how that's where he would usually find himself after being restrained. Instead, he was still in the med bay, lying down on his back. Looking up, and straight into his wife's eyes that were looking down on him, he found no trace of anger or any other negative sentiment in them; there was nothing but love, sweet, and tender love.

Under the constant throbbing going on inside his head, Barry winced and closed his eyes after just a few seconds.

"What happened?" He rasped, after moisturizing his lips.

What transpired earlier felt like a dream: jumping at Caitlin, being drugged by his wife and the rest of his family rushing into the room without, seemingly, trying to rescue him. Maybe it was a dream, a nightmare fed by his sickness or merely another hallucination. Reality and figments of his imagination were harder and harder to discern with each passing day.

"You were hallucinating again," calmly explained the reporter, "you thought it wasn't Caitlin and were about to attack her. I had no choice; I'm sorry."

"No," groaned Barry, who was preparing to prop himself on his elbows, suddenly stopped in his movement when he felt resistance against his two wrists. Metallic handcuffs were immobilizing both of them on the bed frame and the attempt to move sent a metallic squeaking note echoing all over the room. "What-"

Barry's glance immediately fell on his right hand to realize just how tightly he was secured against the bed's frame on each side with the power dampening cuffs. His confused eyes squinted at the instrument restraining him as the fog inside his mind was still clouding his thoughts. Tender hands delicately grabbed his face and directed it back toward the anxious features of his wife.

"I'm sorry, we had to; you were out of it and speaking complete nonsense about something taking over Caitlin," soothly explained Iris, "we'll take care of you, you'll be ok. I promise."

No, it wasn't okay. Barry shook his head and struggled once more against the restraints, but it was useless. His heartbeat increased. A shiver passed down his spine. Sweat poured out of his skin and ran down his cheek while his sweaty hands pushed down against the mattress, "no, you don't understand," he protested.

She needed to understand. If there was one person the hero had any chance to reason with it, that was his wife. "You have to untie me, please. I swear there's nothing wrong with me, I'm okay; I finally understand now what's going on."

Well, he didn't comprehend it totally, but Barry figured out enough to know he's been fooled. Now, he needed to find just how deep the roots of his problem were. They had to find out what happened with Caitlin. They had to find out what was up with that shadow because, now that Barry thought back on it, it tried to hurt the doctor a few weeks ago; did it know what was going on back then? What were his true intentions? Good or bad?

"How's our patient today?"

The CSI never thought he would live the day where hearing Killer Frost host's voice would turn his blood to ice, but it was happening now. Drugged and bound, he was powerless and helpless to defend himself. His green eyes turned to his wife with the closest imitation to puppy eyes he ever did;

"Please, Iris, you need to trust me on this," he pitifully pleaded.

It was no use. The reporter gently transferred all her hair over her left shoulder and she turned around to face the new arrival. "He's still confused and delusional," she stated, a sentence to which Caitlin reacted by nodding solemnly and going straight to the medical cabinet.

"Don't," protested the captive man on the bed, shaking his head and struggling once more to get away, fully aware that he didn't even have enough slack in his restrains to push himself on his forearms.

The cuffs endlessly banging against the door's frame covered the light doctor's footsteps as she moved around the bed to go to Barry's right side, newly armed with a filled syringe. And, it was only then that the hero finally took notice of the IV inserted inside the back of his hand. Soon after the speedster put his attention toward the medical wire coming out of his skin, his eyes swiftly found the now empty bag of medication hanging on support.

"It's okay, just relax; everything will be over soon," gently answered Caitlin, letting the words flow out of her mouth in a detached, and almost robotic, manner. How could Iris be so oblivious?

Barry's green eyes darted all around the room, searching for help, only to find his wife still sitting in a seat with a blank and an almost emotionless look on her face. The moment Barry looked back at the other side of the bed, he spotted a translucent fluid going down the wire and entering his body, one drop at the time. No, no, no.

"Everything is almost over, Flash," stoically repeated the doctor to her trashing patient whose struggles grew weaker by the instant.

 _Cisco, help me_ … wanted to say the weak speedster as his heavy eyelids closed and his mind drifted off away from the people he thought were his friends.

Just as darkness was about to take him away completely, a thought struck him harder than the bolt of lightning that first hit him; the shadow, he's seen it before! He witnessed it even before Cisco's death, and he was so close to figuring it out his identity, but time ran out first.

*****FLASHFLASHFLASH*****

_Real world:_

Cisco's voice boomed the instant he passed the entrance of the cortex, not that he had much of a choice if he wanted to be heard over the high-pitched screech.

"What's going on?" He shouted.

His shoeless feet were moving forward with huge strides as the man was practically jogging to the medical room where the ice Meta was hurriedly taking the pillows from under her unconscious and seizing patient's head, efficiently laying him flat on the bed. It wasn't until the short man was right next to the bed that he finally started hearing the short and uneven gasping breaths coming out from his best friend whose muscles and limbs were weakly trashing in all directions, threatening to dangle himself in all the medical equipment connected to him. There was no need for a medical degree to understand that the hero's health was in imminent danger after a swift glance at the red symbols flashing next to the displayed vitals and accompanying the alarms.

A fraction of a second was all the time Caitlin spared to glance up at her newly entered friend before proceeding to stride away from the bed. It was the time to act, not chitchat unless it was to give instructions.

"Try to hold him down," she firmly ordered the next second, prompting the young Meta into action before the doctor was done walking straight to the medicine cabinet.

It wasn't easy to comply with her directions with the unconscious body moving his limbs in an uncoordinated manner, weakly brushings and hitting his best friend, who only had one free arm to accomplish the task. Thankfully, just as Caitlin was coming back with a syringe, everything stopped all at once and allowed the two friends to breathe out in relief, a shared sentiment that wasn't going to last.

"How did you arrive so fast?" Loudly asked Caitlin over the still screaming alarms while Cisco let go of the grip he had on the speedster and grimaced from the pain his movement awoke in his wounded right shoulder, "I thought you went to take a nap as I told you."

Just as she finished her sentence, the monitor's piercing screeching started to dissipate; the man's vitals were still pretty low, but at least they were stabilizing, and his heartbeat was slowing down. It was all good signs, for now at least.

"I was. I went to rest on this level, but I swear you can hear these-" started to answer Cisco, gesturing at the computers, "-these alarms all around the place. What's going on?"

Caitlin frowned, clearly weighing whether to believe the reason or not, but dismissing the issue. They had way, way more significant problems at the moment.

"In an instant, his vitals started bottoming out even more than they already were," she commented while looking at the data on the screen.

Cisco shivered; "is it because of the-"

Shaking her head before her friend could finish his sentence, Caitlin deposit the filled syringe on the desk that was nearest to the bed. "No, it's not it. Well, I meant, of course, it's still doing a lot of damage, but it shouldn't be winning on its own. Barry's body just completely stopped fighting, like it doesn't even realize something is wrong."

"How long d-"

Halfway in his sentence, Vibe stopped to close his eyes and moisture his lips, unable to get the words out of his mouth; asking out loud how Barry had to live was like sealing the deal. As long as no one was to pronounce the words, the hero still had a chance. Right?

"At this rate, I don't think he can continue doing this for much longer if he doesn't stabilize soon. The next hour will be critical," quietly said the doctor, almost to the point of whispering while passing her hair over her shoulder, an action designed to move her attention toward anything else other than the glance of her interlocutor. She wasn't exactly eager to see his reaction and the distressed features she was sure were there.

"We should contact the team, so they can be there when-" trailed off the vibrational Meta, just as quietly.

"Yeah-" whispered back the doctor, unsure if her words got heard, or if she even said it out loud instead of her head considering how low her voice was. Pretending to move a lock of hair behind her ear once again, she swiftly moved her hand under her eyes to wipe the silent tears falling.

Struggling to regain her composure, the ice Meta coughed a few times to free her airways before speaking again.

"Let's put him on his side; I want to re-check his wound."

*****FLASHFLASHFLASH*****

_Inside Barry's head:_

Time passed. How much time exactly? Who knew? Time was a weird, and ungraspable concept when unnatural circumstances, or unknown drugs, would come and disturb a person's perceptions. Whatever Caitlin was injecting him, it was very effective at keeping Barry in a continuous sensation of fog inside his mind; he would often find himself drunkenly looking at the ceiling that was whirling in front of his eyes. Every time he would blink, a new scenery would unveil with a different person sitting by his side; one time it was his daughter speaking to him, then, another blink, and this time it was Caitlin, then nobody.

One thing for sure; it's been days considering how a short beard was now scratching his skin. It might be a detail, but an annoying one considering how it was impossible to move his arms and hands to scratch the itchy spots.

"Help... me," he weakly whispered to the form he knew was sitting next to his bed based on the chair creaking every once in a while.

"Everything is gonna be okay, you're okay," answered a distorted voice that quickly dissipated inside Barry's confused mind.

The green eyes closed again to the world, and the temptation to let go of everything grew a bit more tempting. Anything to get out of there. Plus, at this point, the man who saved Central City was even starting to forget why he was there. How did he get hurt? Why was he sedated? Why were there these constant and uncomfortable sensations going on and off in his back?

"Everything's alright, Barr, you're gonna get better if you just try to stay relaxed and don't fight," said the voice piercing through the diminishing fog dampening Barry's senses.

Joe.

The numb fingers of the CSI slowly opened and closed, allowing the sick man to feel the tingling at the tips of them, a sensation that was also well spread in his toes. That was a start and slightly better than when he couldn't even move them the last time, so he found some clarity. But, to compensate, he was feeling a new invisible weight on his chest that was crushing his lungs and making it near impossible to breathe. If Barry could get anything going his way, he would go back to sleep to escape that new discomfort, but his body wouldn't let it have it as adrenaline was released and sent into his bloodstream for some inexplicable reason.

But why?

He wasn't in any imminent danger. He was safe with his family, and he was in the sickbay because... What was he there for already? Something was wrong. In his numb and confused state, that was the one thing he was sure of. His eyes snapped open, and he slightly turned his head on his side to get a better view at the detective looking down at him, determined to figure out what his instincts were trying to tell him. As his glance was moving and adjusting to get a better angle to see his foster father's face, the speedster froze. He saw her. Iris. She was there, right behind the detective, and she was sobbing and crying.

"Don't leave me, you can't do that," weakly whimpered the reporter with her whole body going translucent for a second, just like Cisco. Oh, wait, Cisco. Now the Scarlet Speedster's memories were coming back, he now remembered why he was in this situation.

Cisco wasn't real. Iris wasn't real. And yet, his wife sounded more genuine right now in her sorrow than any of his friends and family staying by his side in the last few weeks.

"You're okay, son," robotically said Joe, sadly looking down at him and without giving any reaction that would have hinted he was even aware of Iris's presence behind him.

"Please, come back to me," said Barry's wife.

"I love you, " whispered back the hero, almost closing his eyes 'til everything clicked together in a sudden instant of clarity.

A shiver ran down his spine. Electricity shook his entire body instantly and his whole being jostled. Wait. The shadow. Barry knew where he'd seen it; he knew what it was. Except, it couldn't be here, that was impossible, unless…

Unless all of this, all his surroundings and the people in it, wasn't real. Unless it wasn't just Caitlin who wasn't herself and who wasn't real. It would, for sure, explain his lack of power, but it still didn't tell where he was exactly since it didn't feel like the same environment he found himself in the very first time he encountered the shadow.

What if…. what if he was inside his mind? If he was genuinely right about his newly theory, there might be a way out of this.

"I want to come back to you; I want to be with you again," quietly whispered Barry in the direction of his wife.

"I know you do, I'm glad to hear it," answered Joe, still unaware of the extra person in the room.

 _I'm coming back, Iris_ , thought Barry to himself before summoning every bit of energy he had. If they were inside his mind, he should be in control. The cuff's metal dug into his tender skin as the speedster pushed and pulled, and the blood pumping hard in his ear blocked the words coming out of the detective screaming at him in confusion at Barry's sudden aggressive actions.

"ARG!" With one sharp movement, and final action, where Barry felt his skin breaking, the cuff finally snapped and he found himself sitting on the bed almost instantly under wide-opened eyes of the sole witness whose panic and disbelief took over his features.

Jumping to his feet, Joe moved forward in the clear intention to restrain the man, "Barry, what are you doing? Stop!"

"You can't keep me, prisoner… anymore!" He shouted, harshly pushing the older man who stumbled backward, clearly not expecting this surge of aggression, and barely stayed on his feet thanks to the desk he managed to grab before going down.

Not waiting for Joe to gather back his balance, Barry pushed himself out of bed and the instant his bare feet touched the cold ground, he dashed out of the room in his boxers while making sure to push the Detective one more time on his way out. With his still malfunctioning powers, it wouldn't take long for Joe to catch up with him if the speedster didn't take a small head start first; everyone knew how bad of an athlete he was without the Speed-Force and especially now with drugs still running in his system despite the adrenaline giving him renewed strength.

He had to get to the Shadow. He had to. That was the only thought in his head at the moment; if his visit didn't payout, he would find himself at a dead-end. The CSI needed to cross his fingers and hope he didn't truly attack the real Joe on his way to see a creature who tried to kill Caitlin. A few moments later, the hero finally turned one last corner to enter the room he and the team captured Reverse Flash many years ago. His chest was quickly moving up and down, and sweat was pearling on his forehead, but he somehow didn't find himself catching his breath — just another abnormality of this place.

Straight ahead, still and trapped, was the mysterious being that had been haunting him just as much as Cisco in the past few weeks. Confidently, Barry took the first few steps into the room, looking right at his interlocutor before speaking.

"I know what you are, who you are. You're me, aren't you?"

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> *Gasp* wait what? ;) Now raise your hand if you're even more confused...mwa mwa
> 
> Let me know your thoughts in the comments.
> 
> Next chapter all ready to come next Friday, and there's a LOT of explanation in the next one, so be ready!


	11. True Colors

Mere moments after Caitlin sent a text message to the rest of the team, telling them to hurry back to the hero's bedside, flashes of purple and yellow lightning entered the room. When the colorful manifestation of the Speedforce faded and dissipated, it revealed the young XS, dressed in black pants and a green t-shirt, and her mother wearing a black skirt and a red shirt. The anguish was all over the speedster's wife features whose mind was obviously overwhelmed by this sentiment considering how she managed to put her skirt backward and place the zipper in the front section.

"Oh my God, Barry!" Exclaimed the reporter, rushing forward and going straight to her husband's side before taking his right hand between her owns without hesitation.

His whole face was so pale; it was way too pale for someone who was supposed to be alive, and his shallow and uneven breathing was only increasing the woman's anxiety.

"I thought you said he was weak but stable," commented Nora to Caitlin. Every single one of her words came out without any animosity toward the person she knew was doing her best, but they were filled with anguish.

"I'm sorry, I thought he was..." carefully said the doctor, unable to get the right words to form. For a moment there, she genuinely thought her patient's condition was going to stay under control long enough for his family to take a few moments to rest and clean themselves. Obviously, she was wrong, even if the reason was beyond her understanding, "I'm sorry."

"What can we do?" Inquired Nora, choosing to put her effort into finding a solution instead of trying to blame someone, while closing fast on her father's side.

Worriedly, XS putting a delicate hand on Barry's right shoulder as she was now standing right next to her mother who just took place on the last vacant seat right next to Cisco.

"May-"

Whatever Caitlin was about to say got lost when a sudden vibration made itself known in her black pants' pocket. Groaning at the distraction, she plunged her hand in that pocket to take her cell out with the clear intention to shut it off and call back later. Except, upon seeing the ID of the caller, she instantly picked up and started moving away from the group, realizing it couldn't wait for that one person.

"Joe-" she started to say before moving out of ear drop range. The poor man was probably just as worried sick as the rest of them.

"He's not fighting this, not anymore," commented a worn out Vibe to his best friend's daughter after realizing it might take a little longer than a few seconds before Caitlin would be back, "his mental activity is crashing down, fast, just like the rest of his vitals."

Iris' eyes suddenly brightened up with an idea before Cisco's whole sentence was over and one that almost forced her to interrupt him. Swiftly, she turned her attention away from her husband and toward Barry's best friend to express it:

"Can you vibe me inside of his head?" she urgently inquired.

Sadly, the metahuman shook his head, "my powers are still pretty messed up since Cicada attacked me last week, I don't think I can do it," he pitifully said, "you can try talking to him anyway, Caitlin said it's not impossible he can hear us."

No. Iris wasn't going to take this as an answer.

"Please, Cisco, we have to try, " pleaded the reporter, "we might not get another chance at this," she insisted. Remorse hit her for half a second after the last word left her lips; she was asking for the hero to hurt himself for some groundless hope that going inside The Flash's mind could somehow magically cure her husband.

"Cisco, I-" she started, biting her lips, and getting ready to apologize for being so harsh. She got cut off before she could add another word.

"Alright, I'll try," yielded Vibe before getting up on his feet and hiding the grimace of pain from jostling his bad shoulder that was still tightly secured in the sling, "hang on to my shoulder," he instructed. Iris was right; they had nothing more to lose by trying, and Barry wouldn't do any less if any of their lives were at stake.

Nodding with determination, the reporter jumped back on her feet and complied with the instructions, unconsciously recreating the crucial moment when she and Mon-El went to rescue their loved one inside their own world.

"You're ok?" She asked with concern when she felt trembles underneath her fingers that were placed on her friend's shoulder.

Her worries increased when not only she didn't find herself sprung into another dimension at the moment the engineer's hand made contact with his possibly dying friend, but when she also spotted a drop of blood running from Cisco's nose.

"Just...j'st...spe'k," he whispered through his firmly closed teeth.

Here goes nothing. Swallowing her saliva and pushing away, as much as possible, her rising tears, Iris gathered the strength to speak up to the sick CSI. Her eyes unconsciously closing when she started speaking :

"Barry, I don't know if you can't hear me, but please, you can't give up. Don't leave me. I need you. We all need you," she whimpered weakly, unable to raise her voice more in fear it would break and cause her to crash, "please, come back to me," continued Barry's wife.

The tremors exponentially increasing underneath her palms brought back her attention to the present and her actual, physical, location. When she opened her eyes again, inside the medical bay, her glance immediately fell on the man standing next to her; Vibe was shaking so badly that his body was threatening to drop to the ground at any instant, probably sooner rather than later.

"Cisco? Are yo-"

Before she could ask the question, the man's knees buckled under him, and he started going down under the combine scream of both Joe's daughter and Caitlin, who was making her comeback inside the room, both of them loudly calling out his name.

*****FLASHFLASHFLASH*****

_Inside Barry's head:_

"I know what you are, who you are. You're me, aren't you?"

In the blink of an eye, the shadow transformed from an indefinite form into the shape of a tall and slim man, one that seemed very familiar. Indeed, when its features and outfit finished taking shape and became even more apparent than they were, it became extremely recognizable. It was more than that; it was like looking into a mirror. Now standing in the trap was none other than a carbon copy The Flash, down to the very last detail. Well, maybe not every single one considering how the shadow was in full superhero suit while interlocutor was still in his boxers. It's not like he had a lot to stop to grab clothes and coffee after his escape from the medbay.

Never mind, scratch that thought. The two versions of Barry Allen weren't so different after all. Looking down at his own body, Barry jostled when he realized he wasn't wearing the same thing that he was just an instant earlier. No, he wasn't only in his underwear, he now also was in his full speedster uniform; looking sharp and ready to take on whatever threat would come his way.

Quickly grabbing a hold on himself, Barry looked up again to continue speaking to the person standing in front of him:

"You're my powers, aren't you?"

Once again, his interlocutor nodded and allowed the real CSI to continue speaking, "I knew I'd seen you before, but we're not in the Speedforce this time, aren't we?"

It took a lot of time to connect the dots because of how different the dangerous looking creature was compared to that time Barry came in contact with it the Speedforce, after trying to regain his powers, but there was no doubt possible about the conclusion. The connection between the shadow and Barry was too strong and familiar, and their separation would undeniably explain all the difficulty the speedster had to access his power during the last month or so.

Finally, the representation of his powers opened his mouth and spoke with Barry's voice, "I am," he said to answer the first question that had been asked to him.

"Why are we separated? Why didn't you reveal yourself to me? And, even more importantly, what the hell is going on?" Inquired Barry, stepping forward and closer to the trap with his fists tightly closed, partly in determination and partly from the growing pain in his back coming now that he was getting closer.

It would probably be a better plan to set it free before anyone would arrive, but Barry's burning desire for answers was stronger than his logic at this very instant.

"I tried to make you see the truth, but the poison wouldn't allow us to connect again," stated what used to be the shadow.

"Poi...what? What poison?" Slightly stuttered the hero, taking a quick second to look over his shoulder and make sure they were still alone, for now, "who poisoned me...us?"

His interlocutor slightly shook his head negatively, "I'm not sure; we collapsed and passed out right after someone stabbed us from behind. The poison had been working hard to minimize your chances of survival by keeping us apart and by trying to make you compliant by using your mind against you."

Barry moisturized his lips and blinked, taking in all the information, "So, we truly are inside my mind," he concluded, almost enthusiastically. He was right. Everything was finally making sense now; which was a weird thing to say considering he was talking to a representation of his powers while being trapped inside his mind thanks to a poison that disguised itself as his best friends.

No wonder his friends had been so hell-bent on telling him to stop fighting and keep him away from the shadow; his immune system, boosted by the Speedforce, was too strong to be taken down in a fair fight. The only way for any sickness to take control was to convince the hero of Central City to lay down and die.

"But, wait, I don't remember being stabbed. What happened exactly?"

Once again, the mirror version of himself didn't have all the answers, "all I recall is watching down at the blast side after Cicada left and thinking Cisco was dead. I'm not sure what happened after."

It was Barry's turn to cross his arms against his chest and to shake his head, thinking, "it couldn't have been Cicada; his dagger isn't poisoned, and it didn't hurt Cisco after he cut his hands. Plus-"

His mouth stayed open and his arms uncrossed as a flash of understanding passed in his eyes, "wait. Cisco. Iris. And even Nora and Caitlin...I've seen apparitions of them all. But, if we're in my head, they can't be ghosts, can't they? "

"They're glimpses of reality. Your real friends are out there, and they're trying to get you back in the ring and win the combat. They've been speaking to you, praying you'll wake up and come back to them."

The CSI gasped, "does that mean Cisco is alive?" He breathed out. After all of these weeks spent mourning his friend it was hard to believe that his theories about Cisco being out there could be right.

"It's possible," admitted the revealed shadow, "I'm almost positive we heard his voice before passing out, but we can't be certain 'til we get out."

The breath of relief that came out lifted off Barry's shoulder the most burdensome charge he never had to carry. Cisco. Was. Alive. Or, well, to quote exactly the person in front of him; he probably was.

"What about these weird dreams I've been having? What about the pain I felt and still feel when I come near you?" Inquired the speedster, grimacing through the continuous and growing agony in his old wound. If that was a dream injury, it shouldn't be this painful.

"All of this has also been glimpses of reality; the closest we get from each other, the stronger we are to get back in the real world and to regain consciousness."

So that pain was the reality, and these dreams were him waking up for brief moments? Everything was upside down; reality was the dream, and the dreams were the reality. Except, if the agony he felt during these brief contacts with the world of the living were any indication, it probably meant that his body was in bad shape and needed to get out of here fast.

"How do we get out of here?"

"First, you need to free me, and then we need to go to the forest where we were attacked. I have a feeling that's where we'll find our exit."

One swift motion down of his head was all the CSI needed to indicate his understanding. Backing off by a few feet, Barry went straight to the control panel, and within a few seconds, he freed what used to be his enemy by deactivating the force field. Instantly, flashes of lightning sparkled all around the speedforce representation who extended his hand as an invitation to the CSI. Accepting it without hesitation, Barry walked into the deactivated trap and firmly grabbed his other self's hand.

The physical response to the firm physical contact between the two of them was instantaneous, and a gasp escaped Barry's lips when he felt a shock of energy entering his hand and spreading in his entire body. A whirlwind of electricity appeared out of nowhere and surrounded the pair in the blink of an eye while illuminating the whole room in a beautiful, yet slightly terrifying, way. The spectacle, in which the two forms had disappeared into, died without a few seconds and when it dissipated just as quickly as it appeared, it only left one person still standing; Barry was now all that's left with his right arm extended in the air. Exhaling deeply and blinking slowly, as if he was coming out of a dream, the speedster slowly flinched his fingers, closing and opening them a few times. The burning sensation in his back was still a constant companion, but it was endurable, plus, now that the CSI knew the truth about everything, he felt like the pain was making him feel alive.

"I'm coming back," he whispered to himself while allowing the familiar tingling sensation to spread in his body and all the way to the top of his fingers that quickly started vibrating.

Oh, that felt good. Sure enough, Barry's mouth twitched in a quickly expanding smile and, soon after that, his entire body got covered by beautiful yellow flashes of lightning, and his eyes sparkled; the SpeedForce was running wild in his blood once more.

It was time to go home; Flash took off running and left the lab in the time to say so.

Nothing, or no one, was going to stop him from getting out of this dream and waking up; it was his mind, and he was the one in control of it. Sensing the wind brushing his face and the mechanical movement of his feet hitting the ground again and again surrounded by the scenery that seemed frozen in time under the velocity of the man travel was exhilarating.

Barry sure missed that!

Mere moments later, Flash reached his destination and made a full stop at the forest's clearing, right on top of the hill that was giving him a good view of the blast site; the site where he thought Cisco died. The tingling sensations in his limbs from running never felt so good. Exhaling slowly he took one of the deepest breaths he ever did, taking the fresh air in, even if that technically wasn't real oxygen. It still felt so damn good.

Looking down, he spotted the fake Caitlin standing right next to the blast site and actively resisted the urges of anger rising at the sight of the thing pretending to be his friend. The unidentified woman was dressed in black pants and a black leather vest over a green shirt. Her long curly hair was freely cascading down on her shoulders, and her eyes were staring straight at the hero; there would be no sneaking up on her. Trying to ignore her for a second, the hero analyzed his surroundings in search of any abnormality that would lead to his escape, only to find none.

"Come on, Flash, don't be shy," coldly called out  _Caitlin_  down there.

Closing his fists and controlling his boiling emotions, Barry carefully walked down the hill and advanced toward his adversary.

"What am I going to do with you? You've been pretty bad Flash. Everything would've been so much easier if you'd stop fighting this like," the woman said again with despise in her every word.

"Drop the act, it's pretty certain you're not Caitlin," answered the speedster just as coldly, "who are you? Reveal yourself, now!" He shouted to the girl who giggled in response, hands going on her hips. The treats clearly weren't doing a thing.

"Oh sweety, there's no need for such harsh words. If you wanted to spend some time with me, you should've asked earlier."

While the last few words were still in the process of forming and leaving her lips, her hair slowly turned from auburn to a very bright red color, and the transformation quickly spread all over her features and outfit. The incredibly charming and beautiful woman in her mid to late 30s was now wearing green boots up to her knees and a short dress of the same color going to the middle of her thigh. The unique looking skirt was formed with countless and incredibly real looking leaves all around while lianas were entangled on her sleeveless attire, almost covering it all. Plants tattoos were covering most of her arms.

"Since we're in your head, you can call me Pamela, but Poison Ivy would do too," she said, smiling.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Let me know what you thought!
> 
> Surprise surprise, our villain is finally revealed and hopefully none of you saw it coming ;) I hope that everything's clear now. If you guys feel like it before next week, to help you wait, I suggest to go back and re-read the whole story. I promise that now that you know what's going on, it will be like reading it for the first time but with a new angle. Let me know how it worked out if you decide to try it
> 
> Shoutout to Zainab Hamza for making the connection with the Speedforce shadow in the Runaway Dinosaur episode!


	12. Showdown

_Inside Barry's head:_

"What did you do to me?" Growled the speedster while letting the yellow lightning move and sparkle all around his body in a threatening manner.

"Oh, nothing much," answered back Poison Ivy while gracefully moving a step backward, then two.

Barry tried to follow her, but his attention got stolen by a sudden apparition that popped on his right side, just a few feet away. For the second time in the same day, the Scarlet Speedster found himself staring at another version of himself. That other version was wearing his Flash suit and his bruised face, that was filled with anguish and disbelieved, was looking down at the newly formed hole in the ground where his friend used to be. The enemy they came to fight in this place was long gone, but so was Cisco.

Acting without thinking, the present-time Flash extended his arm and tried to reach out to his past self, only to see his hand passing right through the memory. What else was he expecting?

The characteristic sound of a breach opening echoed in the eerily quiet forest night. The muscles of past Barry shivered underneath his skin, and a faint movement was made to turn around and take a glimpse at who, or what was about to surprise him. Except, before he could do any of that, a thick and big crawling vine sneaked out of the grass like a vile snake with surprising velocity and leached out at full power at the red wearing figure.

With one sharp move, the vegetal foe cut deeply into his prey's tender skin and the screech of agony that followed and pierced the peace of the night wholly covered the soft thumping sound of the speeder's knees hitting the wet grass. His swiftly fading senses blocked the hero from witnessing the unmistakable form of Cisco jumping out of his portal at the same instant Nora West-Allen came back to the scene.

Both of their eyes widened in shock in shouted the speedster's code name in unison.

"FLASH!"

The synchronicity might've been amusing if the circumstances hadn't been so dire. Both young people rushed forward at full speed to cover the short distance separating them from the speedster as fast as possible and, once making their way there, Cisco's knee urgently hit the ground. Once he was next to his best friend, Cisco hastily turned the wounded man on his side without even realizing he was using both of his hands and forcing his bad, injured, shoulder in the movement.

"Hey, hey. Hey. Stay with me, buddy," he quickly asked, grimacing through the pain and looking around to try and locate the source of the attack. What the hell happened during these last few moments during which he was gone? Did Cicada attack again? Or was it something, or someone else entirely?

Standing right next to the group of the past and observing every single movement and every word was the real and present Flash who couldn't detach his eyes from the scene. It was hypnotizing, but what happened a few weeks ago wasn't his priority, he needed to take care of the source of his problem first.

Gathering all his will, the man who saved Central City forced himself to blink to extract himself out of it all and brought back his attention onto the one person who's been orchestrating all of it.

"Why are you showing me this? What are you trying to do?" He growled at Poison Ivy who was barely a few feet away from him.

"Oh, nothing," she innocently answered while shrugging and moving further away by a few extra feet under Barry's eagle eyes. "Maybe distracting you while I regain control?" She finally suggested after a quick pause.

Barry inhaled sharply. She was right; all of this caused him to drop his guard for an instant. Everyone else other than himself and Poison Ivy, so basically every person who was simply a memory, dissipated out of thin air mere seconds before countless vines and roots erupted from the ground and lashed out in his direction with all the available strength. Touched by a direct hit, Barry flew across the forest, and the red figure went crashing against the nearest tree, accompanied by a loud groan of pain as he fell right back to the ground on all four.

The good news was; he didn't hear any cracking noises usually following a broken bone, but it was hard to tell with the ringing in his ears. Well, to be honest, it wasn't like it mattered since it wasn't real. Staggering like a drunk man, Barry pushed his left knee down on the ground and gathered his energy to try getting back on his feet. Except, his efforts only got met by more roots taking a hold on both of his legs, which efficiently prevented him from moving more. Got it; no break allowed. Not that the hero expected any.

"You can't beat me here; I created this world. It's mine to rule," Poison Ivy taunted with her left hand on her hip and the second one gesturing at her adversary. Her movements were replicated by her creations that kept growing out of the ground and took a hold on Barry's arms, pulling them toward the grass. "I wish you could've stayed quiet and allow your end to come peacefully. It would've been so much easier for both of us, but, if that's how you want it..."

Following her words and gestures, another poisonous root surged and aimed straight for the immobilized and powerless speedster who gasped and almost gave up to the temptation of closing his eyes. It was over. But, no, he fought too hard to go down like that, he was going to stand tall 'til the end. Well, in a manner of speaking. Just before the end came, the root stopped and started gracefully to dance on the spot, while still ready to strike down when the command would come.

It wasn't going to last, that's for sure.

"Any last words?" She asked, almost playfully.

That's not how he was supposed to go. He wasn't supposed to die on his knees, restrained, and with his fists forced down against the ground. Poison Ivy might have created this pocket of reality, but they were still inside his head and his body. Barry's head bowed down, hiding his face from his adversary and looking at his trembling legs before answering.

"Yeah, I do," almost whispered the man for an instant, before taking a dramatic pause. A few seconds passed, and he raised his head; flashes of lightning were now sparkling in his eyes, that were simultaneously burning with anger and determination in that instant, "GET OUT OF MY HEAD!" He shouted with a renewed energy.

Releasing an auditable battle cry, Barry converged every single bit of strength he ever had, and an extra more that only real hero could summon. He only had one chance at this. Responding to the desperate call, every single cell of his body violently vibrated, and his muscles build up all their strength, culminating in one sharp movement. That one attempt was all Barry needed to cleanly break the plants grabbing both of his arms and free himself!

"How did y-" stuttered Pamela, her eyes widening in surprise and her body freezing for one second.

 _It's MY body_ , wanted to shout out the hero as an answer, but it wasn't time for chitchat.

"KILL HIM!" Shouted Poison Ivy to her controlled root still positioned in front of the man.

Responding instantly, the plant charged forward and plunged toward Barry's chest who vibrated just in time to let it pass right through him. In his non-corporeal form, a very temporary one, Barry swiftly got out of the grasp other roots had on his legs and got back on his feet. If he were going down, it would be kicking and fighting. Wasting no more time, the CSI took off running with his feet barely touching the ground and his whole body flew straight to his victim.

"KILL HIM! KILL HIM NOW!" Frantically said the aggressive woman, prompting tens and tens, maybe more, vines and roots surging from all around her.

Surging, dodging, charging, jumping, sliding...

Every single movement and every single fraction of a second was crucial to the speedster trying to reach out to his adversary who wasn't that far away, technically. Except, the closer he was getting to her, the denser the vegetation was. And, not only were they forming a shield, but the plants were also aggressively whipping all around while also trying to get a grab on their prey. Barry was surrounded, and his chances of getting through this growing jungle without being touched by these poisonous plants were thin. And that was the optimistic odds.

For every ground, every foot, he would get closer to her target, Barry would be forced to back off just as much, sometimes more, to dodge an attack coming his way. He couldn't keep this up forever, not in his weakened state and not with the constant pain eating his muscles. How long could she keep going? Forever? Probably longer than Barry's depleted body.

Alright, new strategy.

Backing up, he rushed out of the combat zone and out of the forest.

"You can't escape me here. You can't run from me," taunted his enemy whose voice echoed everywhere and nowhere simultaneously no matter how far the hero was from her position.

 _Oh, I'm not going anywhere,_  commented Barry to himself in his head, while technically already be inside his head. His life was weird, like really weird.

Sliding to a full stop on an abandoned dirt road, and rising the sand in the air, Barry took just one second to allow the electricity to build in his body. His powers were flowing through his veins and feeding his being with unnatural and indescribable force. To quote Eobard Thawne, he was no longer human; he was part of the Speed Force. He was an extension of it. Carefully, Barry's heel dug deep into the sand as he was trying to find the least unstable surface underneath his feet to take flight.

He was ready.

Like a tornado, an unstoppable force, Barry took off and ran faster, and faster, and even more quickly with every step. Barry took out all the vegetation on his way as the grass burned under his feet and the trees all bent and broke in his path. All there was left behind by The Flash was a trail of destruction, but the vegetation wasn't the hero's concern at the moment. Every step was bringing him a bit closer to his target, and his speed just kept on increasing. Feeling close enough, he rose his right fist up, ready to strike, despite the readiness of his adversary who only smiled maliciously behind her newly-built wall of vines and roots in front of herself that was adding to her already harsh defences. Her construction was just as compact as it was robust, and Poison Ivy was waiting for their prey to return.

A wall that strong might, indeed, be hard to break, even with a supersonic punch. So, it was a good thing that the wall wasn't Barry's target.

Modifying his path ever so slightly at the last instant, Barry headed for a towering, at least a hundred-year-old tree, with a clear idea in his mind. If he could race on the side of a building, why not on the side of a tree? After striding straight to the top, the speedster jumped off without hesitation, nor breaking his momentum, and flew over the seemingly unstoppable wall. In the middle of his flight, he felt the graze of a root that almost succeeded in grabbing his ankle mid-movement. When Barry passed on the other side, his inclination changed and aimed the ground instead. Hitting it with everything he had, the hero created a shock wave beyond words that shook the entire forest like a powerful earthquake and uprooted some of the closest trees.

"ARRG!" Shouted the speedster in pure agony the instant he made contact with the grass and felt every bone in his right-hand shattering into countless pieces. The same motion broke clear his arm and prompted the broken tip of the bone to pierce through the skin. The odds of having broken ribs to match the rest of his injuries were high.

The execrable pain sent waves of white flashes in front of his eyes and almost made him lose all contact with his mind and limbs as he rolled down a few feet before completely immobilizing himself at the spot where he couldn't do a single thing except stay there and shake in indescribable anguish

"Get up, Barry, get up," he encouraged himself, forcing his mind to fill itself with images of his friends, his family, his wife and his daughter who came back from the future to meet him, a daughter who never had her chance to meet him. His chest was expanding fast, and each one of his breath was pure agony; yup, definitely broken ribs to add to the list.

If he were to lose consciousness, it would be over; Poison Ivy would kill him, and not only he would never see anyone ever again, but Nora would get erased from existence. Passing out and dying wasn't an option, no matter how excruciating was the ache.

Pushing his left arm on the ground, Barry clamped his teeth together and bit his cheek to stop himself from screaming in pain; he had to shut all these sensations out to survive.

 _Come on, Barry_ , he mentally encouraged himself, finally managing to gather himself enough to get back up and to scan his surroundings.

It worked!

All the controlled and poisoned vegetation went back underground and were all totally out of view, knocked down by the shockwave. Close by was Pamela laying down on the bare ground, utterly free of grass after Barry's powerful move, and she was severely shaking and struggling to get back up with her head between her hands. Her head was moving from right to left and right again as if she was trying to get rid of the confusion filling it.

Shouting out his pain, despite his best efforts to keep it all inside, Barry ran, or more like quickly and awkwardly limped his way to his enemy. Arriving at his distance, Flash mentally shut down all his pain and, with his broken right arm tightly clamped against his chest, he brought back his left arm behind to gain momentum before striking his enemy down. Under his punch, Pamela crumpled and stopped moving; she was out for the count, vanquished.

A mere second, or two, after Poison Ivy went down like a light, the most beautiful portal Barry had ever seen formed just behind her motionless form. Tears of relief and joy built at the corner of his eye, mixing with the ones created by the agony. Hopefully, the latter would be gone after waking up.

Limping slowly, the speedster walked right to the breach before letting it engulfed him.

*****FLASHFLASHFLASH*****

_Real world:_

"Are you sure you're okay for this? The last thing I need is to have two patients to take care of at the same time," soothly asked Caitlin, with a definite tad of worry in her voice.

"Hey, it's not like I fell or anything," protested Cisco, earning a side glance and a subtle eye roll, "I simply lost my balance a little."

A little? Yeah sure. Let's just completely forget about how his nose was bleeding and how he just lost his balance without making any movement.

"You would've ended up on the ground if it wasn't for the chair being so close, and for Iris and me," said Caitlin. After finishing her sentence, she turned her attention back to her patient who was lying shirtless on his side and who had a bandage tightly wrapped around his torso with a bright bloodstain on it.

Going to the desk, Caitlin grabbed a fresh pair of medical gloves and put them while simultaneously checking around to make sure she had everything.

"You're ready for this? We can wait for Joe to arrive and let him take your place if needed," she made sure one last time, only to earn another firm response.

"He and Iris have been through enough. I'm fine, I promise," he assured, smiling before returning his attention on the monitor displaying all of Barry's vitals.

"Alright, let's do this," said Caitlin, "for now I just need you to tell me if there are any changes in his condition. Anything could be important," she continued, slowly untightening her patient's bandage and taking it off while unconsciously holding her breath in her movement; she was expecting the middle of her friend's back to be even more infected and gruesome than the last time she tried cleaning the stabbing wound.

Except, when she exposed the injury, she released her breath. It wasn't gone, it would've been a miracle if it was, but the infected skin had a slightly better colour despite the greenish and yellowish abscess filled with pus on the wound. It probably was a good thing the speedster was still deeply unconscious and out for the count as her next actions wouldn't be pleasant in any sense of the word. But this needed to be done; the infection needed to be cleaned and drained, plus the latest scan revealed new foreign bodies inside her friend's back, despite having taken it all out just over half a day earlier. There's no way that the broken, incredibly small pieces of roots that she missed the first time around had somehow grown bigger inside the poisoned man's body. Right?

"I'm sorry, Barry," she apologized before breaking the skin with her needle, straight into the collection of pus, before proceeding to press on each side of the wound.

Her nose wrinkled and her whole face grimaced at the stench that filled the room. That was disgusting, but it didn't stop her expert hands to continue to accomplish their task efficiently.

A slight tremor ran under her fingers and underneath Barry's skin, but he stayed as still as he'd been since all of this started.

"Hang in there, you can beat this," whispered the doctor as she continued to work tirelessly.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Let me know your thoughts on the fight ;) Just one chapter left
> 
> Just out of curiosity; is there one of you two who tried going back to the start now that you know what's going on?


	13. Come back to us

"Caitlin-"

Cisco's voice sounded preoccupied, which was never a good sign, and that alone caught the doctor's attention right away before he had time to finish his sentence.

"Barry's pulse and blood pressure are spiking," Vibe said while turning around to glance at his unconscious friend first, and then move his glance toward the doctor who just deposited an old, barely less than an inch long, piece of root on her metallic plate.

The foreign body she just took out of her friend's body was dry and dark, turning almost charcoal black, and it almost broke into many pieces under Caitlin's touch. It was the fourth piece that she took out of her Barry's back in the last half an hour, and they all looked the same; dead. They all were ready to turn into ashes in the blink of an eye like ancient charred scrolls. It didn't matter anymore to know if these broken pieces had grown in the last few hours because, for some unknown reason, they somehow all ceased to live.

The words of Vibe prompted Caitlin to turn around and take a good look at the monitors to confirm Cisco's words; her patient's vital signs were indeed spiking. Except, mere seconds after she glanced at them, the surge in the readings started going down again. Thank God. Caitlin sighed out of relief before nodding to her friend; they were in the clear, for now. After wiping her forehead with her forearm, she leaned forward again and went back to work on the disgusting wound that still needed to be cleaned up.

The instant she started again to poke at the injury, additional tremors shook the speedster's body, accompanied by a groan, which caused the doctor to frown and stop moving her hands there were still on her patient.

"Caitlin? His vitals are spiking up again," warned Cisco again, suddenly walking back and going to face his best friend. What he saw made him gasp instantly, "I think he's waking up."

These six simple words completely froze the doctor on the spot for one second before she prompted herself into action and instantly let go of the physical contact that was causing pain. Swiftly, she moved around the bed to join the vibrational metahuman standing in front of the speedster's head; she arrived in position just in time to see heavy eyelids struggling to open.

"You can come back to us. You can do this, Barry," she encouraged while leaning forward a little to get closer with her right hand started hovering over Barry's right shoulder.

She was a doctor, meaning everyone was counting on her to assess the situation and make Barry's health her priority. But it was harder than it should've been. Instead, at this instant, Caitlin was way more an anxious friend needing to see the hero make his miracle turnaround than she was the team's physician. Confused green eyes filled with pain and tears slowly opened halfway, and the lips trembled uncontrollably under the oxygen mask that was assisting his laborious breathing.

The shaking increased when Caitlin got closer, and when she tried to make contact, the half-conscious speedster's eyes widened, instinctively recoiling from her touch. Gasping in surprise, Caitlin backed away, uncertain. The fear she saw in his eyes was undeniable, but why? Since when was he afraid of his friend? Is it possible that, in his confused state, he mistook her for Killer Frost, the one that tried to kill him a few times before she turned her life around?

"Barry? What's wrong?" She gently asked as she worked on controlling her rising anxiety and analysed every single inch of the man's face, searching for signs of recognition. The lips moved again under the mask, and this time, with a little more coordination; Barry was trying to say something.

Coming to that conclusion, Caitlin's frantic hands went straight to the oxygen mask and pulled it back on her patient's neck, a movement that both allowed the speedster to speak again, but also dramatically increased the needed strength to draw oxygen in his lungs. Adjusting to the sudden change of his environment, Barry inhaled sharply like a drowning man finally breaking through the surface before his breath turned into a coughing fit.

"You're okay. You're back. You're okay," tried to reassure the doctor who was too preoccupied with the health of the person in front of her to even notice that Cisco was frozen in confusion behind her.

"In and out, take it easy," she tried again, frowning and wondering why in the hell would she take the mask off in the first place. It wasn't a great idea, medically speaking. But just before she could put it on again, green eyes locked on her face with a mixture of hope and, what was it? Fear? Apprehension? Uncertainty?

"Do you know where you are?" Finally let out the doctor, still hovering her hands over his body without daring to touch him again. At least, his coughing was subsiding and was near non-existent in the next moments.

"Cait?" Finally whispered the speedster, uncertain. His words were so quiet it easily could've been lost on the doctor if her attention wasn't so focused on every single syllable that might come out.

A nervous chuckle left her lips; the recognition flickering in her patient's features was a real relief.

"Yeah, it's me, Barry. It's over, I promise," she said. Well, was it over? Hard to say on the spot but considering how they were almost ready to plan a funeral, seeing Barry waking up was sure an unexpected improvement.

Turning her head around, the woman caught a glimpse of Cisco, who was finally stepping forward and approaching the bed. Smiling from ear to ear, Vibe walked right into Barry's field of vision.

"Hey man, what's up?" He casually asked with his signature huge grin.

Upon hearing the metahuman's voice, Barry jostled, and his green eyes widened for an instant, before tentatively reaching out with his shaking right hand. So, Cisco was truly alive.

"Cisco... real?" He asked, hesitantly, but hopefully.

Cisco's smile widened, if that was even possible, as he allowed the hand to take a firm hold on his right arm. Well, to call it a firm grip was kind of a strong word considering how Barry barely grazed and clamped his fingers with the slightest of touch before letting go as his friend was continuing to speak to him.

"Of course, I'm real. Nothing can take me down," proudly said Cisco, which earned him a disapproving look from Killer Frost's host. Yeah, right, Cisco totally didn't almost die. It would be lying to say that Caitlin didn't restrain herself from nudging the scientist standing next to her.

"You almost didn't make it," she reminded to Vibe, partly scolding and partly restraining her relieved that he was fine.

Someone else was finally interacting with Cisco; he wasn't just a figment of his imagination anymore! Cisco was real, so was Caitlin. It was the truth, and he was back. Letting go of the deepest breath Barry ever made, the hero allowed his body to evacuate all the stored adrenaline. While doing so, tremors started running free through his entire being, and he caused his heavy eyelids to start closing again.

"Barry," continued Caitlin, reaching out again for her friend's shoulder, and hesitating a moment, but still deciding to push her luck and touch him after seeing that Barry's eyes were closed. Her heartbeat accelerated in anticipation; was her patient going to move away again? To her relief, no movement or attempt to escape her touch were felt underneath, even if Barry still kept his eyes closed, so she continued speaking, "I'm going to need to finish cleaning your wound, and it's going to hurt. I'm sorry. It's almost done, so try to relax."

Feeling too tired to answer, Barry nodded, to confirm his understanding of the situation and his agreement to the treatment that wasn't going to be pleasant. Forcing himself to relax, he allowed the darkness to wrap his arms against his body and slowly drag him into unconsciousness. Or, that was the plan until he felt Caitlin's delicate hands grabbing his oxygen mask, probably to put it back in place seeing how the efforts Barry made to stay awake and communicate made him lose some of the colour in his cheeks.

Wait! His eyes snapped open, and his feeble hand battled away the mask. "How long was I gone?" He rasped weakly.

If he disappeared for a month or so, what happened with Cicada? How many people did he fail to save? How was his daughter? Underneath him, as the hero was still laying on his side, his arm shifted in an attempt to prompt himself in a better position to see his surroundings, but his movement was stopped by two firm hands keeping him down.

"It's okay, Barry, calm down. Everyone is okay," assured the doctor who easily guessed the reason behind the question; you could always count on the speedster to get worried about the fate of everyone else before his well-being. That was especially true when he was the one being sick or wounded.

"You've only been out for over a day, a day and a half," informed Cisco, "nothing happened since then. There hadn't been a single attack of any kind, Cicada or anyone."

"Where is-" sluggishly started to ask the half-conscious man, whose foggy brain was still in the process of receiving and analysing the answer he got from his best friend. Before he could complete his new sentence, a realization hit him; he's been out for less than two days? How was that possible? What happened to the whole month of memories he collected in his mind?

"No, can't be," he rasped, dubious.

Shaking his head in the faint hope to clear his confusion probably wasn't the best idea considering how it caused his nausea to rise again, and his body threatened to expel all the bile in his stomach. In an attempt to avoid what would be an unfortunate event, the man closed his eyes and took a deep breath.

"Longer..." he mumbled with still with his eyes closed that also prevented him from seeing the confused glances shared among his friends.

What exactly did he mean there? Deciding to dismiss the issue, Caitlin gently smiled and spoke up.

"You're just disoriented, I was expecting it," finally said the doctor, reassuringly, "but you'll be okay. We all will be; we took care of the person who did this."

When he found back the ability to look at the world without having the ceiling whirling in front of him, Barry opened his tired eyes again at the mention of the person who did this. Poison Ivy. Had to be.

"Wh're… 's she?" He rasped again before pausing to humidify his lips using his tongue.

The sleep and rest he's been denying his body for the last minute or so was coming back with a vengeance, and there was no doubt on who would win the battle. It was barely a matter of seconds.

"She's in the pipeline, Barry. Nora and I took care of her when you were on the ground," Cisco assured, "now, rest. You need it," he finished, tiredly smiling. No, he wasn't just tired, he was beyond worn out. But Cisco also was deeply relieved to see that he wasn't going to need to bury his friend.

"Your body needs rest, Barry, don't fight it," added Caitlin, but her words were useless since the speedster was out like a light before she could even finish her sentence. It probably was a good thing considering how her last words could've confused him even further about whether or not he was back in the real world.

Within the first twenty-four hours, the amount of time the CSI could stay awake grew quickly, just like his level of awareness. And, during the following day, the fog in his mind dissipated. Well, most of it. What he experimented, was it a fever-induced dream? Was it real? Was it just an incredibly vivid nightmare brought up by the last images his mind got of the real world before passing out?

Or, an even bigger question; why would Barry even question this? After all, he's lived too much weirder and much worse, starting with Music Meister throwing him inside a musical spectacle. Somehow, for some inexplicable reason, this last experience felt just so different; it was both incredibly odd, and yet so realistic.

Maybe a part of him didn't want to admit that he truly allowed himself to accept he was crazy and useless to the point he thought about being willing to die. It would be more comfortable to pretend that all of this happened in a dream controlled by his unconscious mind and where he had no control over his thoughts.

Except, every unexplained experience he endured inside that place was concurring with what his friends told him about what truly transpired in the cortex during these two days; from his weird dreams to his friends' apparitions. So, two days, right? It was hard to believe he made, during this short period, memories worth of almost a month. They sure were living in a weird time, weren't they? Plus, Caitlin had no logical explanation about why Barry's condition worsened or how he suddenly recovered when he was closing on the point of no return.

It looks like an induced coma caused by a poison pretending to be his friends would have to do as an explanation.

"Hey, do you have your doctor's permission to get up?"

Barry winced at the sound of Cisco's voice behind him as he was manoeuvring his yoga pant clad legs over the edge of the bed. Busted. Damn. When the hero turned his head toward the entrance of the room, he spotted his best friend standing there and leaning against the door's frame. The vibrational hero still had his right arm secured in the slang and tightly against his side while his left arm was resting against his chest and over his injured limb.

"I have it," protested the speedster who still stopped in his movement.

"Uh huh," answered Cisco, clearly not believing a word.

"I have her permission as long as she doesn't know," mumbled the speedster under his breath, and under the judgmental look of Vibe, "don't look at me like that, I'm sick and tired of being in bed. I'm not planning to go take a lap around the city or anything; I just wanna stretch my leg for a second."

Unconvinced, Cisco just stood there, and his brows furrowed deeper. Barry rolled his eyes and started to move again to get back up. Except, the second his legs touched the ground, tremors ran through them and threatened to send the rest of his body straight to the ground.

"Whoa-" exclaimed the speedster, reaching out for any furniture, not that there was any close enough, to keep his balance. Thankfully, Cisco lunged forward and put himself in his friend's path to grab him by the shoulders of his grey S.T.A.R. t-shirt to help Barry stay upright.

"Easy there," he said while slowly, but surely, helping the speedster to straighten himself. The pair stayed in that position for a few seconds to make sure Barry was safe to get up, for the first time in just under four days, without falling.

"Weren't you supposed to be out helping Ralph take care of our prisoner anyway?" Asked the hero after his friend let go of him.

"Already done. Poison Ivy is back where she belongs, in Arkham. They're pretty happy to get their prisoner back," informed Vibe.

Barry nodded before adding, "thanks, by the way."

Cisco smiled and shrugged before jokingly answered, "it was purely selfish; there's no way I can let you fall on your face without Caitlin finding out I let you get out of bed while I was supposed to keep an eye on you. You know how scary she can be."

Barry chuckled, oh he knew. Except-

"That's not what I meant," he corrected, slightly shaking his head, "thank you for everything else. Caitlin told me how you stayed by my side almost the entire time. Not sure I would've found my way back without your help. So, thank you," he warmly said.

Barry was planning to take time, later on, to thank everyone else whose voice helped guide him back, starting with his wife, his lightning rod, and also Nora and Caitlin. He got a glimpse of them all when he was trapped inside his mind. But, the one constant who kept coming back for him was his best friend.

His friend smiled through the veil of darkness flooding his eyes at the fresh memories, "of course, you're my friend. I wasn't going to give up on you, not on my watch."

"What happened in the forest…. it wasn't your fault," firmly said the CSI, making sure to get eye contact and keeping it.

"I didn't s-"

Barry exhaled from his nose; he knew Vibe too well not to understand the real meaning behind his last words; not on my watch. Cisco wasn't talking the two days of waiting in the sickbay.

"What do you say we stop dying on each other's watch?" He added, dropping the manner altogether; he was back, Cisco didn't get killed by Cicada, and everything was back to normal.

"I can agree on that," nodded Cisco, before approaching footsteps behind them caused both men to stiff.

"What are you doing up?" Growled a way too familiar voice.

Uh oh. The doctor was back. Both superhero friends shared a guilty, yet slightly amused glance. Everything was truly back to normal.

**THE END**

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> There you go! Thanks a LOT to the people who've enjoyed it 'til the end, you guys are amazing, truly. Let me know what you thought about the ending :)
> 
> There's a Crisis one-shot in the work and a sequel for Zero Hour coming up soon if you guys are interested!


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